Maundigand-Klimd said, “I’ve long been aware of your distaste for the so-called occult sciences, my lord. Permit me to begin by telling you that I share your attitude.”
Dekkeret frowned. “That seems a very strange position for you to take.”
“How so?”
“Because of the paradox it contains. The professional magus claims to be a skeptic? He speaks of the occult sciences as the ‘so-called’ occult sciences?”
“A skeptic is what I am, yes, though not quite in the sense that you are, lordship. If I read you correctly, you take the position that all prediction is mere guesswork, hardly more reliable than the flipping of a coin, whereas—”
“Oh, not all prediction, Maundigand-Klimd.” It was unnerving, looking from one head to the other, attempting to maintain eye contact with only one pair at a time, trying to anticipate which head would speak next. “I concede that Vroons, for example, have a curious knack for choosing the proper fork in the road to take, even in completely unfamiliar territory. And your own long affiliation with Lord Prestimion leads me to conclude that much of the advice you’ve given him has been valuable. Even so—”
“These are valid examples, yes,” said the Su-Suheris—it was the left head, the one with the deeper voice, that spoke. “And others could be provided, things difficult to explain except by calling them magical. Undeniably they are effectual, however mystifying that is. What I refer to, when I say we share a certain outlook toward sorcery, involves the multitude of bizarre and, if you will, barbaric cults that have infested the world for the past fifty years. The folk who flagellate one another and douse themselves in the blood of bidlaks butchered alive. The worshippers of idols. The ones who put their faith in mechanical devices or fanciful amulets. You and I both know how worthless these things are. Lord Prestimion, throughout his reign, has quietly and subtly attempted to let such practices go out of vogue. I’m confident, my lord—” somewhere along the way, Dekkeret realized, the right head had taken over the conversation “—that you will follow the same course.”
“You can be sure that I will.”
“May I ask if it is your plan to appoint a High Magus when your reign officially begins? Not that I am applying for the job. You should know, if you are not already aware of the fact, that the new Pontifex has asked me to accompany him to the Labyrinth once the ceremonies of your coronation are behind us.”
Dekkeret nodded. “I expected as much. As for a new High Magus, I have to tell you, Maundigand-Klimd, that I haven’t given the matter a bit of thought. My present feeling is that I don’t have any need of one.”
“Because you would regard whatever he told you as essentially useless?”
“Essentially, yes.”
“It is your choice to make,” said Maundigand-Klimd, and from his tone it was clear that the matter was one of utter indifference to him. “However, for the time being there still is a High Magus in the Coronal’s service, and I feel obliged to inform the new Coronal that I have had a perplexing revelation that might have some bearing on his reign. The former Lord Prestimion advises me that it would be appropriate for me to bring this revelation to your attention.”
“Ah,” said Dekkeret. “I see.”
“Of course, if your lordship prefers not to—”
“No,” Dekkeret said. “If Prestimion thinks I should hear it, by all means share it with me.”
“Very well. What I have done is cast an oracle for the outset of your reign. The omens, I regret to say, were somewhat dark and inauspicious.”
Dekkeret met that with a smile. “I’m grateful, then, for my lack of belief in the mantic arts. It’s easier to handle bad news when you don’t have much faith in its substance.”
“Precisely so, my lord.”
“Can you be more specific about these dark omens, though?”
“Unfortunately, no. I know my own limitations. Everything was shrouded in a haze of ambiguities. Nothing had real clarity. I picked up only a sense of strife ahead, of refusals to offer allegiance, of civil disobedience.”
“You saw no faces? You heard no names named?”
“These visions do not function on such a literal level.”
“I confess I can’t see much value in a prediction so murky that it doesn’t actually predict anything,” said Dekkeret. He was growing impatient with this now.
“Agreed, my lord. My visions are highly subjective: intuitions, impressions, sensations of the most subtle kind, glimpses of probability, rather than concrete details. But you would do well to be on guard, all the same, against unexpected reversals of circumstance.”
“My historical studies tell me that a wise Coronal should always do just that, with or without the advice of mages to guide him. But I thank you for your counsel.” Dekkeret moved toward the door.
“There was,” said Maundigand-Klimd, before Dekkeret had quite managed to take his leave, “just one aspect of my vision that was clear enough for me to be able to describe it to you in any meaningful way. It involved the Powers of the Realm, who had gathered at the Castle for a certain ceremony of high ritual importance. I sensed their auras, all clustered around the Confalume Throne.”
“Yes,” Dekkeret said. “We do have all three Powers at the Castle just now: my mother, and Prestimion, and I. And what exactly were we doing in this dream of yours, the three of us?”
“There were four auras, my lord.”
Dekkeret looked puzzledly at the magus. “Your dream misleads you, then. I know of only three Powers of the Realm.” He counted off on his fingers: “The Pontifex, the Coronal, the Lady of the Isle. It’s a division of authority that goes back thousands of years.”
“Unmistakably I felt a fourth aura, and it was the aura of a Power. A fourth Power, my lord.”
“Are you saying that a new usurper is about to proclaim himself? That we’re going to play out the Korsibar business all over again?”
From the Su-Suheris came the Su-Suheris equivalent of a shrug: a partial retraction of the forked column of his neck, a curling inward of his long-clawed six-fingered hands. “There was no evidence in my vision that favors such a possibility. Or that denies it, either.”
“Then how—”
“I have one other detail to add. The person who carried the aura of the fourth Power of the Realm carried also the imprint of a member of the Barjazid family.”
“What?”
“It was unmistakable, sir. I have not forgotten that you brought the man Venghenar Barjazid, and of course his son Dinitak, to the Castle as prisoners, though it was twenty years ago. The pattern of a Barjazid soul is extraordinarily distinctive.”
“So Dinitak’s going to be a Power!” cried Dekkeret, laughing. “How he’ll love to hear that!” The nonsensical revelation, coming at the climax of this lengthy and baffling conversation, struck him as wonderfully laughable. “Will he push me aside and make himself Coronal, do you think? Or is it the post of Lady of the Isle that he’s got his eye on?”
Nothing disturbed Maundigand-Klimd’s impenetrable gravity. “You give insufficient credence, lordship, to my statement that my visions are subjective. I would not say that the Barjazid who was cloaked in a Power’s majesty was your friend Dinitak, nor could I say that he was not. I can only tell you that I felt the Barjazid pattern. I caution you against too literal an interpretation of what I tell you.”
“There are other Barjazids, I suppose. Suvrael may still teem with them.”
“Yes. I remind you of the man Khaymak Barjazid, who not long ago attempted to enter Lord Prestimion’s service, but was turned away at the advice of his own nephew Dinitak.”
“Right. Venghenar’s brother—of course. He’s the one who’s going to be a Power, then, you think? It still makes no sense, Maundigand-Klimd!”
“Again I caution you, lordship, against seeking so literal an explanation. Obviously it’s absurd that there can be a fourth Power of the Realm, or that a member of the Barjazid clan could so much as aspire to that distinction. B
ut my vision cannot be dismissed out of hand. It has symbolic meanings that at this point not even I can interpret. But one thing is clear: there will be trouble in the early part of your reign, my lord; and a Barjazid will be involved in it. More than that, I cannot say.”
9
“Are you still awake?” Fiorinda asked.
Teotas, beside her, muttered an affirmative. “What hour is it, anyway?”
“I don’t know. A very late one. What keeps you up?”
“Too much wine, I suppose,” he said. The pre-coronation banquet that evening had gone on and on, everybody carrying on like drunken roaring fools, Prestimion and Dekkeret side by side at the high table, Septach Melayn, Gialaurys, Dembitave, Navigorn, and half a dozen other members of the Council, everyone in a rare good humor. Abrigant had come up from Muldemar for the occasion, bringing with him ten cases of wine of a glorious vintage dating far back into the time of Lord Confalume, and doubtless all ten cases contained nothing but empty bottles now.
But it was an evasive answer. Teotas knew that the wine was not to blame for his wakefulness. He had had as much to drink as anybody, he supposed. The irony was that wine was wasted on him—and he a prince of Muldemar, a member of the family that made the finest wines in the world! He might just as well be drinking water. His intense, churning soul burned the alcohol as fast as it could enter him: it had no effect on him at all. He had never really been drunk in his life, never even pleasantly tipsy, and that was a heavy price to pay for being spared from hangovers as well.
What was bothering him, he knew, had nothing to do with last night’s debauchery. It was, in good part, uneasiness over the vastness of the changes that were about to come over his existence, now that Prestimion’s time as Coronal was over and his brother’s new life in the Labyrinth was about to commence.
In theory, Teotas thought, he himself would feel no great impact from any of that. He was the youngest of the four princely Muldemar brothers, with no hereditary obligations, free to live out his life as he pleased. Prestimion, the eldest, had always been destiny’s darling, rising swiftly and inevitably to the throne of the world. Taradath, the brilliant second brother, had perished in the Korsibar war. To sturdy Abrigant, the third, the family fief at Muldemar had descended, and he lived there now at Muldemar House, as princes of Muldemar had for centuries, presiding over the winemakers and dispensing justice to his adoring citizens.
Teotas, though, had lived the life of a private citizen until Prestimion had chosen him for the Council. He had taken to himself a wife, the excellent Lady Fiorinda of Stee, a childhood friend of Prestimion’s wife Varaile, and together they had reared three admirable children; and when Prestimion named him to the Council, he made himself one of its most useful members. All in all, he had created a satisfying life for himself, though there was that unhappy quirk in his character that prevented him from taking full pleasure even in the utter fulfillment of all ambition and desire.
And now—now—
The to-ing and fro-ing of these coronation ceremonies was finally coming to an end. Soon everyone would have settled down in his proper place. For Prestimion and Varaile, that place would be the Labyrinth. And Varaile wanted Fiorinda—her sister-in-law and chief lady-in-waiting—to live there with her.
Did Varaile understand that that would mean, for Fiorinda, the uprooting of her entire family? Of course she did. But the two women were inseparable friends. It must seem to Fiorinda and to Varaile as well that it was better for Fiorinda and her family to move to the subterranean capital in the south than for them to be parted from one another.
Teotas, though, had lived at the Castle since he was a boy. He knew no other home, except only the family estate at Muldemar House, and that was Abrigant’s property now. The Castle’s thousands of rooms were like extensions of his own skin. He roved far and wide through the meadowlands outside, he hunted in the forest preserves of Halanx, he enjoyed the giddy pleasures of the juggernauts and mirror-slides of High Morpin, he wandered now and again down to Muldemar to reminisce about old times with Abrigant. As his sons grew toward manhood he took them with him in his wanderings among the cities of the Mount, bringing them to see the stone birds of Furible in their mating flight, and the lovely burnt-orange towers of Bombifale, and the festival of the flaming canals of Hoikmar. Castle Mount was his life. The Labyrinth held no appeal for him. That was no secret to anyone.
He had always indulged Fiorinda in every whim. This was more than a whim; but he would, if he could, indulge her in this too. But this one was very hard.
There was a final twist in the situation that made his yielding well-nigh impossible. Dekkeret, upon returning from Prestimion’s coronation, had asked him to serve him as High Counsellor of the Realm. “It will provide continuity,” Dekkeret had said. “Prestimion’s own brother, taking the second highest post at the Castle, and who else is better qualified than you, a key member of Prestimion’s own Council—?”
Yes, it made sense. Teotas was honored and flattered.
But was Dekkeret aware that Varaile had already summoned Fiorinda to be her companion at the Labyrinth? Apparently he was not. And the two appointments were irreconcilable.
How could he be Lord Dekkeret’s High Counsellor at the Castle while Fiorinda was the Lady Varaile’s chief lady-in-waiting at the Labyrinth? Were Dekkeret and Varaile expecting them simply to rip their marriage apart? Or were they supposed to divide their time, half the year at one capital and half at the other? That was plainly unworkable. The Coronal needed his High Counsellor at his side all the time, not off for months communing with the Pontifex in the Labyrinth. Varaile would not want to be parted that long from Fiorinda, either.
One of them would have to make a great sacrifice. But which one?
Thus far Teotas had shied away from discussing the matter with Fiorinda, hoping forlornly that some easy miraculous solution would present itself. He knew how unlikely that was. It was ever his inclination to yield to her wishes, yes. But to decline the post of High Counsellor—it would be almost treasonous; Dekkeret needed and wanted him; there was no other obvious choice. Varaile could surely find other ladies-in-waiting. It was not as if—but then, on the other hand—
He saw no answer, and it was tearing him asunder.
That was one part of Teotas’s anguish. But also there were the dreams.
Night after night, dreams so terrible that he had come by now to fear falling asleep, because once he plunged into that dark land beyond his pillow he became prey to the most monstrous horrors. It helped not at all to tell himself after he had awakened that it had merely been a dream. There was nothing mere about dreams. Teotas knew that dreams hold powerful significance: that they are the harbingers of the invisible world, tapping for admission at the boundaries of our souls. And dark dreams like his could only be the tappings of demons, of lurking forces beyond the clouds, the ancient beings that once ruled this world and might one day seize it from those who had come to possess it.
Sleep now terrified him. Awake, he could defend himself against anything. Sleeping, he was as helpless as a child. That was infuriating, that he should have no defense. But he could not fight off sleep forever, try as he might.
It was coming for him now, despite everything.
“Yes, Teotas, yes, sleep…” Fiorinda was stroking his forehead, his cheeks, his throat. “Relax. Let go, Teotas, let go of everything.”
What could he say? I dare not sleep. I fear demons, Fiorinda? I am unwilling to put myself at their mercy?
Her embrace was sweet and soothing. He rested his head against her soft warm breasts. What was the use of fighting? Sleep was necessary. Sleep was inevitable. Sleep was…
A tumbling downward, a free descent, a willy-nilly plummeting.
And then he is crossing a bare blackened plateau, a place of clinkers and ash, of gaping crevasses, of gaunt dead trees, and he is growing older, much older, with every step he takes. He is inhaling old age like some poisonous fume. His skin puckers and beco
mes cracked and wrinkled. He sprouts a coat of coarse white hair on his chest and belly and loins. His veins bulge. His ankles complain. His eyes grow bleary. His knees are bent. His heart races and slows. His nostrils wheeze.
He struggles forward, fighting the transformation and always losing, losing, losing. The pallid sun begins to slip below the horizon. The path he is following, he knows not why, is ascending, now. Every step is torment. His throat is dry and his swollen tongue is like a lump of old cloth in his mouth. Gummy rheum drips from the rims of his eyes and trickles across his chest. There is a drumming in his temples and a coldness in his gut.
Creatures that are little more than filmy vapors dance through the air about him. They point; they laugh; they jeer. Coward, they call him. Fool. Insect. Pitiful creeping thing.
Feebly he shakes his fist at them. Their laughter grows more raucous. Their insults become more vicious. They lay bare his utter worthlessness in fifty different ways, and he lacks the strength to contradict them, and after a time he knows that no contradiction is possible, because they are speaking the simple truth.
Then, as though they are no longer able to sustain interest in any entity as trivial and contemptible as he, they melt away and are gone, leaving only a trailing cloud of tinkling merriment behind them.
He staggers on. Twice he falls, and twice he claws his way to his feet, feeling the harsh scratch of bone on bone, the thick rustle of dark blood pushing through narrowed arteries. He would not have believed that being old could be such agony. Darkness comes swiftly. He finds himself deep in starless moonless night and is grateful that he no longer has to look upon his own body. “Fiorinda?” he croaks, but there is no response. He is alone. He has never been anything but alone.
A light, now, blinks into being in the distance, and rapidly intensifies to become a cone of luminous green, widening to fill the heavens, a geyser of pale radiance spurting aloft. As the wind sweeps through it, it stirs swirls of a grayer color, whirlpools of light within light. Accompanying this outburst of brightness is a rushing, whispering sound, like the murmur of distant water. He also hears what sounds like subterranean laughter, resonant, slippery. He goes forward, entering a sort of green cloud that seeps from the ground. The air is electric. His pores tingle. A sour smell drifts upward in his nostrils. His bent and aching body sweats and steams. There is what seems to be a mountain ahead, but as he moves on through the cloud Teotas realizes that what he sees is a giant living thing, squat and enormous and incomprehensible, sitting upright on a kind of throne.