“Does it ever stop?” Navigorn asked. He alone, of the three, had not been to Kajith Kabulon before. “By the Lady, this weather can drive a man berserk!”
Septach Melayn gave him a thoughtful glance. The strange convulsive seizures that had plagued Navigorn intermittently almost since the beginning of the madness epidemic still troubled him from time to time, particularly when he was under stress. Would the steady pounding of the rain send him into another one now? That would be awkward, here in the cramped confines of the floater that they shared.
Probably it would have been wiser, Septach Melayn thought, for Navigorn to have remained behind at the Castle, serving once more as regent, instead of subjecting himself to this expedition. But he had insisted. He still felt that his reputation had been badly compromised by the Procurator’s escape from the Sangamor tunnels. The very similar escape of Venghenar Barjazid and his son from that same prison, although Navigorn could not in any way be blamed for it, had reawakened those feelings of shame and guilt in him. Dantirya Sambail would be causing no trouble today if Navigorn had been able to keep him safely locked up in the tunnels. And so, evidently by way of achieving a redemption of some sort, he had insisted on coming along. Poor frivolous Serithorn, finally, had been stuck with the job of running the government in their absence, aided in that to some extent by Prestimion’s brother Teotas. But the strain of the rain-forest climate was telling on Navigorn. Septach Melayn peered anxiously ahead, hoping for a glimpse of sunlight soon.
He turned to Gialaurys. “What do you say we sing, good admiral? A lively ballad to while away the time!” And launched in lustily on a tune ten thousand years old:
When Lord Vargaiz came to the Shapeshifter hall
And asked for a flask of their wine,
They brought him instead, for the slaking of his thirst
The juice of the glaggaberry vine.
Gialaurys, whose singing voice would have done discredit to the great toad of Kunamolgoi Mountain, folded his arms, glowering, and looked at Septach Melayn as though he had succumbed to the madness himself. Navigorn, though, grinned and joined in immediately:
Now glaggaberry juice, I tell you, friends,
Is a drink to be drunk with care.
But the fearless Lord Vargaiz gulped it all down
In the midst of the Shapeshifter lair
Then the Coronal said, with a sly little smile,
I like the taste of your wine,
It goes down well, but then, I find—
“If you will stop that bellowing for a moment,” said Gialaurys, “we can consider which highway we need to take here. For there seems to be a fork in the road. Or does that not matter, if only we sing loudly enough?”
Septach Melayn looked over his shoulder. They had the Vroon guide Galielber Dorn with them, but the small being was huddled up in the back of the vehicle, shivering with some Vroonish malady. The damp climate of Kajith Kabulon seemed not at all to his liking. “Dorn?” Septach Melayn cried. “Which way?”
“Left,” came the unhesitating reply, a sickly moan.
“But we need to go toward the west. A left turn will take us the other way”
“If you know the answer, why do you ask the question?” said the Vroon. “Do whatever pleases you. A left turn will bring us to the Stoienzar, however.” He groaned and slid down under a pile of blankets.
“We go left, I suppose,” said Septach Melayn, shrugging. He shifted the floater’s course. It would be just splendid, he thought, if this whole procession of vehicles were to set out down the wrong fork. But one did not argue with a Vroonish guide. And indeed the left-hand branch of the highway, after a few hundred yards, began gradually to loop around on itself, doubling on its own course. Septach Melayn saw now that it was curving to avoid a round muddy-looking lake, heavily congested with drifting vegetation, that blocked further progress in the other direction.
The lake’s great mass of floating plants looked sinister, almost predatory: humped tangled masses, leaves like horns of plenty, cup-shaped spore-bodies, snarled ropy stems, everything dark blue against the lighter blue-green of the water. Huge aquatic mammals moved slowly through it, feeding. Septach Melayn had no idea what they were. Their tubular pinkish bodies were almost totally submerged. Only the rounded bulges of their backs and the jutting periscopes of their stalked eyes were in view, and now and then a pair of cavernous snorting nostrils. They were cutting immense swaths through the water-plants, which writhed angrily as the animals gobbled it, but did not otherwise react. At the far side of the lake new growth was already hastening to fill the gaps that the grazing beasts had opened.
“Do you smell something odd?” Navigorn asked.
The windows of the floater were sealed. Even so, a whiff of the lake’s fragrance was coming through. The aroma was unmistakable. It was like breathing the fumes of a distillery vat. The lake was in ferment. Evidently one by-product of the respiration of these water-plants was alcohol, and, having no outlet, the lake had turned into a great tub of wine.
Septach Melayn said amiably, “Shall we sample it? Or will it delay our journey too much to stop here, do you think?”
“Would you go among those pink beasts for a sip of wine?” Gialaurys asked. “Yes. Yes, I think you would. Well, here, then: get down on your knees and swill to your heart’s content!” He yanked at the rotor control and the floater began to halt.
“Your constant hostility starts to bore me, Admiral Gialaurys,” Septach Melayn said.
“Your brand of humor long ago began to bore me, High Counsellor,” Gialaurys retorted.
Navigorn started the floater up again. “Gentlemen—please, gentlemen—”
They went on.
The rain was ceasing, now. They were emerging at last from the forest of Kajith Kabulon. It was possible to see the sun again, blazing with tropical force straight ahead of them in what was undoubtedly the west. Golden Sippulgar and the Aruachosian coast lay off to the south with the waters of the Inner Sea beyond. Before them lay the Stoienzar Peninsula and Dantirya Sambail.
An end came to the bickering. This was new territory to all of them, and with every passing mile the landscape was turning stranger and more menacing. The roadway had diminished until it was hardly more than an unpaved track, barely wide enough to let the floaters go through. In places it was completely overgrown, and they had to halt and cut a path for themselves with their energy-throwers. And then, after a time, there seemed to be no road at all, and it was necessary to have the floaters bull their way onward by main force, with frequent interruptions while they hacked at vines or even trees that blocked all forward access.
There was no rain here, but this country was more humid, even, than Kajith Kabulon had been. A perpetual steamy fog prevailed everywhere. The ground itself exuded moist vapor, belching steam upward at the merest touch of the sun’s rays. Shrouds of furry parasitic plants dangled from every branch of every tree. And the trees themselves were nightmarish things. One, that seemed to create forests all by itself, sent up thousands of slim vertical shoots from a single thick horizontal stem that ran like a black cable along the ground for close to a mile. Another grew with its roots facing upward, rising ten or fifteen feet out of the ground and waving about as though trolling for passing birds. There was a third kind that seemed to have melted and run at the base, for its trunk emerged from a swollen woody mass, a kind of botanical tumor, at least fifty feet across and taller than the tallest man.
These were mere oddities, though, curious and strange, that posed no dangers for the travelers. And there were others that were actually charming in their peculiarities, like the tree whose multitudes of brilliant yellow flowers dangled at the ends of long ropes, like so many lanterns, or the one of somewhat similar structure whose suspended blue-gray seed-pods clanged in the breeze to make a pleasant tinkling sound. A little way onward they came to a huge grove of trees that entered into bloom all at the same moment, at sunrise. It was Septach Melayn, rising early, who saw it happ
en. “Look at this!” he cried, awakening the others, as giant crimson blossoms began opening everywhere at once around them, creating a symphony of color, a single great chord. All day long they passed through this wondrous forest of flowering trees; but at twilight the petals began to drop with the same singleness of timing as had marked their unfolding, and by dawn they all were fallen and the ground had become a carpet of pink.
But as the expedition proceeded westward such moments of beauty came further and further apart, and what they encountered now seemed increasingly threatening.
First came a few manculains, creeping about sullenly in the underbrush: solitary long-nosed many-legged creatures, sluggish and timid, with narrow red ears. They were covered all over by long yellow spines sharp as stilettos whose black tips, breaking off easily at the lightest touch, or, seemingly, only at a glance, could burrow deep into your flesh as though they had minds and volition of their own.
Then some round hairy insects with double rows of malevolent eyes were seen feeding on a small mikkinong that had injured one of its fragile legs: they reduced it to picked bones in mere moments. And then, in an open place in the forest, the travelers met a hovering swarm of energy-creatures, each one a brilliant white flash no bigger than one’s thumb. When they realized that they had been seen, they quickly elongated into horizontal forms two yards long that danced about in the air in unattainable groups a hundred yards away. One unwary officer drew too close to them and they fell on him with a wild buzzing sound of glee, surrounding him in such numbers that he could not be seen at all within that cloud of zigging streaks of light, and when they withdrew from him nothing remained but blackened cinders.
The energy-creatures did not reappear. But the heat and humidity, which had been overwhelming from the moment of the expedition’s entry into the peninsula, increased with every mile. They were not far from the coast, now. The breeze here blew straight from Suvrael, so that the southern continent’s searing blowtorch heat mingled with the vapors rising from the warm sea that separated the continents and turned the air of the Stoienzar’s maritime lowlands into a salty soup.
Bugs of all sorts grew huge and mighty here: meaty things with bristly legs and clacking jaws, crawling about everywhere over the moist sandy muck that passed for soil in this place. The first swamp-crabs came into view, also, baleful purple-domed crustaceans of tremendous size resting half-submerged in the marshy ground. Here, too, were groves of the celebrated animal-plants of Stoienzar, things that were rooted permanently in place and manufactured their food by photosynthesis, but which had fleshy arms that slowly moved about, and rows of shining eyes about the upper section of their tubular bodies, and slit-like mouths below. They came in all sizes, and swung about in an unsettling way to stare at the travelers as their floaters passed by. They would, said Galielber Dorn, seize and devour any small animal that came within reach of their grasping hands.
“We should torch them all,” Gialaurys muttered, shuddering.
But they knew they would need their energy-throwers for more immediate purposes. This was the land, now, of the manganoza palms, ungainly slouching trees that grew one up against the next with so little space between that they formed a well-nigh impenetrable wall. These trees had clusters of long, arching feather-like leaves, lined along every edge with astonishingly sharp-edged crystalline cells. The slightest breeze was enough to make these leaves stir and flutter about. It took no more than a glancing touch to draw blood; a harder gust of wind and the trees were capable of lopping off hands, arms, even heads.
Now the journey became truly appalling. There no longer was any road at all, and the only way to penetrate the saw-palm forest was to get out of the floaters and blow a pathway through it with energy-weapons. But every such blast expended here was one less that could be used against the forces of Dantirya Sambail.
Eventually, thought Septach Melayn, it would come down to the necessity of having to advance through this stuff on foot, prepared for ambush and hand-to-hand combat with the Procurator’s men at any moment. And, he reflected, they must know this country well by now, whereas we are strangers in it. In every way the advantage lay with them.
But he kept his misgivings to himself. All that he said aloud was, “This is the perfect place for Dantirya Sambail to have chosen as his camp. His kind of place exactly: everything here is as stubborn and vile and dangerous as he is himself.”
11
In Stoien city it was still at least an hour before dawn. Prestimion had scarcely slept at all. He stood now at the great curving window of his bedroom atop the Crystal Pavilion, staring intently eastward as though by the force of his gaze alone he could somehow hurry the rising of the sun.
Out there in the east, hidden from him now by the darkness that lay like a shroud across western Alhanroel, the future of Majipoor was being shaped. The history of the reign of the Coronal Lord Prestimion was being written. The entire course of the period that would bear his name was going to be determined in the next few weeks. And somehow he was here in Stoien, thousands of miles from the scene of action, passively allowing others to act in his name. He was a marginal player in his own destiny. How had he contrived to allow that to happen?
There was Dantirya Sambail, huddling like a malign spider at the center of the web he had spun for himself in the ferocious jungles of the Stoienzar Peninsula, preparing to launch whatever campaign of subversion and disruption he had been hatching since his escape from the Sangamor tunnels. And there were Septach Melayn and Gialaurys and Navigorn hacking their way toward him through those jungles from the west at the head of one armed force, while a second band of soldiers was moving eastward across the same peninsula to the same destination—an army that the Coronal himself should be leading, or, at the worst, Akbalik or Abrigant, but which was instead commanded by some Pontifical captain whose name Prestimion could not seem to remember more than two days running.
It infuriated Prestimion that he had trapped himself here in Stoien city, unable to take his precious anointed self, or his mother’s, any closer to the zone of peril. Abrigant was back at Muldemar now, exercising the princely responsibilities that had fallen to him when his elder brother became Coronal. And Akbalik, on whom Prestimion had come to rely to the extent that he had begun to think of him as his own successor, surely was somewhere in central Alhanroel by this time, heading for the Castle, weary and perhaps mortally ill from the wound he had suffered in the jungle.
Prestimion had tried to pretend that he needed Akbalik to escort the Lady Varaile back to the Castle to await the birth of her child, just as Akbalik had attempted to persuade Prestimion that his wound was not as serious as it was. But neither of them had been fooled. There were plenty of captains other than Akbalik who could have accompanied Varaile on her journey across Alhanroel. The reason why Akbalik was traveling with her, instead of playing a key role in the attack on Dantirya Sambail’s camp, was that the venom of the swamp-crab was seeping deeper within his body day by day, and the only physicians who could save him were half a world away on Castle Mount.
If Akbalik dies—
Prestimion shook the thought away. He had enough to contend with just now without speculating on contingencies like that. Other beloved friends of his were at risk in the Stoienzar at this moment, while he himself remained cooped up here, wild with the frustration of knowing that he must remain safe behind the lines, where his sacred person would be shielded from the risks of battle. And Dantirya Sambail, surely aware that the moment of reckoning was drawing near, was very likely making ready to burst forth from hiding in all his diabolical fury.
Then, above all, there was the plague of madness steadily spreading through the world, the pernicious disruption that threatened to unhinge everyone’s sanity before it was done, and for which Prestimion alone, however blameless his motives had been, stood responsible. What kind of world had he created, that terrible day at Thegomar Edge, for the son who would soon be born to Varaile and him? What would be the legacy of the Co
ronal Lord Prestimion to the world, other than a time of the most horrific chaos? The pitiful struttings of the Procurator of Ni-moya were trivial by comparison. It was easy enough to envisage the defeat and overthrow of Dantirya Sambail at the hands of the armies now converging on his camp. But the madness—the madness—he was at his wit’s end for a solution to that!
He heard a knocking at his bedroom door.
Prestimion turned from the window. Someone coming to him at this early hour? What else could it be, but news of some new catastrophe?
“Yes?” he called hoarsely. “What is it?”
From the hallway came the voice of Nilgir Sumanand. “My lord, I beg your pardon for disturbing you, but Prince Dekkeret is here to see you, and he will not wait. It is a very urgent matter, so the prince tells me,” said the aide-de-camp, with a certain note of dubiety in his tone. And then another voice, Dekkeret’s, saying impatiently, “No, no, not Prince Dekkeret. Just Dekkeret, that’s all.”
Prestimion frowned. He was rumpled and bleary-faced, stale from the long night’s unrest. “Tell him to wait a moment, will you, while I put myself together a little.”
“I could let him know, if you wish, that it would be better for him to return later in the day.”
Dekkeret seemed to be speaking again out there, explaining something to Nilgir Sumanand in low, emphatically stressed phrases. Prestimion choked back his annoyance. This could go on all morning if he didn’t intervene. He strode to the door and pulled it open. Nilgir Sumanand, looking half-asleep, blinked up apologetically at him. Dekkeret stood just behind the older man, looming up like a wall.