But no stuffed animals surrounded her now. Tuanelys apparently had flung them pell-mell in all directions, as if they were nasty vermin that had invaded her bed. Even the beloved manculain had been discarded: Varaile saw it across the room, lying upside down on the little girl’s dresser, where, as it landed, it had jostled aside a dozen or so of the pretty little glass vessels that Tuanelys liked to collect. Several seemed to be broken. As for Tuanelys herself, she had kicked off her coverlet and lay in a tight little huddled heap, knees drawn up almost to her chin, her whole form rigid, her nightgown pulled up and bunched under her arms so that her small slim body was bare. She was glossy as though with fever. A pool of sweat had stained the sheet about her.
“Tuanelys, love—”
Another moan that wanted to be a shriek. A ripple of convulsive force ran through the girl: she grimaced, shuddered and shivered, kicked out with one leg and then the other, clenched her fists, pulled her head down into her shoulders. Varaile lightly touched her shoulder. Her skin was cool, normal: no fever. But Tuanelys shrank away at the touch. She began to moan again, a moan that turned swiftly into a racking sob. Her features were distorted into a hideous mask, eyes tight shut, nostrils flaring, lips pulled back, teeth bared.
“It’s only me, sweetheart. Shhh. Shhh. Nothing’s wrong. Mother’s here. Shhh, Tuanelys. Shhh.”
She tugged at the girl’s nightgown, drew it down over her waist and thighs, turned her so that she lay on her back, and gently stroked her forehead, all the while continuing to murmur gently to her. Gradually the tension that had gripped Tuanelys seemed to ease a little. Now and again a ripple of response to some horrendous inner vision still went through her, but such things were beginning to come farther apart, and the terrible mask that her face had become relaxed into her normal visage.
Varaile became aware of someone standing over her shoulder. Prestimion? No: Fiorinda, Varaile realized. She had awakened and come down the hall from her own lodgings to see what was the matter. “A nightmare,” Varaile said, without looking around. “Fetch a bowl of milk for her, will you?”
Tuanelys’s eyes fluttered open. She seemed dazed, disoriented, more bewildered even than one might expect a child to be who had been awakened in the middle of the night. This was only her second week of living in the Labyrinth. They had tried to arrange her room here to be as much as possible like the one she had had at the Castle, but, even so—the disruption of her life, the magnitude of the upheaval—
“Mommy—”
Her voice was hoarse. The word was one that she hadn’t used in two years or more.
“It’s all right, Tuanelys. Everything’s all right.”
“They had no faces—only eyes—”
“They weren’t real. You were dreaming, love.”
“Hundreds and hundreds of them. No faces. Just—eyes. Oh, mommy—mommy—”
She was quivering with fear. Whatever vision had impinged upon her sleeping mind was still alive within her now. Bit by bit she began to describe to Varaile what she had seen, or tried to, but the descriptions were fragmentary, her words largely incoherent. She had seen something awful, that was clear. But she lacked the ability to make the nightmare real for Varaile. White creatures—mysterious pallid things—a marching horde of faceless men—or were they giant worms of some sort?—thousands of staring eyes—
The details scarcely mattered. A little girl’s nightmares would have no significant meaning; the thing that was significant was that she was having nightmares at all. Here in the safety of the Labyrinth, in these coiling chambers at the very bottom of the imperial sector, something dark and fearful had succeeded in reaching down to touch the mind of the daughter of the Pontifex of Majipoor. It was not right.
“They were so cold,” Tuanelys was saying. “They hate everything that has warm blood in its veins. Dead men with eyes. Sitting on white mounts. Cold—so cold—you touched them and you froze—”
Fiorinda reappeared, bearing a bowl of milk. “I warmed it a little. The poor child! I wonder if we should put a drop of brandy in it.”
“Not this time, I think. Here, Tuanelys, let me pull the covers up over you. Drink this, sweetheart. It’s milk. Just sip it—slowly, a little at a time—”
Tuanelys sipped from the bowl. The strange fit seemed to be passing from her. She was looking around for her stuffed animals. Varaile and Fiorinda gathered them up and arranged them beside her on the bed. She found the manculain and thrust it under the coverlet, up close against herself.
Fiorinda said, “Teotas also, all last month, the most horrible nightmares. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s having one of them right now.—Do you want me to stay with her, Varaile?”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll look after her.”
She took the emptied milk bowl from Tuanelys’s hand and lightly eased the little girl’s head down against her pillow, holding her there, stroking her to guide her onward, back into sleep. For a moment or two Tuanelys seemed completely calm. Then a fresh shudder went through her, as though the dream were returning. “Eyes,” she murmured. “No faces.” That was where it ended. Within minutes she was peacefully sleeping. Light little-girl snores came from her. Varaile stood watch over her for a time, waiting to be completely sure that all was well. It seemed to be. She tiptoed out and went back to her own bedroom, where she found Prestimion still sound asleep, and lay by his side, awake, until the Labyrinth’s sunless dawn arrived.
Standing before the Lord Gaviral in the great hall of Gaviral’s palace, Mandralisca idly tossed the Barjazid helmet from one hand to the other, a gesture that had virtually become a tic for him in recent weeks.
“A progress report, my lord Gaviral,” he said. “The secret weapon of which I’ve spoken, this little helmet here? I’ve gone far in mastering its use.”
Gaviral smiled. His smile was not a heartwarming thing: a quick twitch of his meager little lips, baring a ragged facade of largely triangular teeth, and a chilly glow flashing for an instant in his small deep-set eyes. He ran his hand through his coarse and thinning covering of dull-red hair and said, “Are there any specific results to report?”
“I’ve penetrated the Castle with it, milord.”
“Ah.”
“And the Labyrinth.”
“Ah. Ah!”
That had been a favorite locution of Dantirya Sambail, that double “ah,” with a moment’s pause between them and a whiplash emphasis on the second one. Gaviral could not have been very old when Dantirya Sambail died, but he had managed to copy the Procurator’s intonation perfectly. It was odd and not in any way amusing to hear that double “ah” coming from Gaviral’s lips, as though by some act of ventriloquy beyond the grave. The Lord Gaviral had more than a touch of his famed uncle’s ugliness, but scarcely any at all of his dark wit and black devious shrewdness, and it did not sit well with Mandralisca to be treated to so accurate an imitation of the Procurator’s manner. Those were feelings that he kept to himself, though, as he did so many others.
“I am ready now,” Mandralisca said, “to propose an alteration of our strategy.”
“And that would be—?”
“To move ourselves somewhat more aggressively into a position of visibility, milord. I suggest that we quit this place out here in the desert and transfer our center of operations to the city of Ni-moya.”
“You perplex me, Count. This is a step you have warned us against since the beginning of our campaign. It would, you said, send an immediate signal to the Pontifical officials that swarm everywhere in Ni-moya that a revolt had broken out in Zimroel against the authority of the central government. Only last month you warned us against tipping our hand prematurely. Why, now, do you contradict your own advice?”
“Because I have less fear of the central government now than I did last year, or even last month.”
“Ah. Ah!”
“I still believe we should proceed with immense caution toward our goal. You will not hear me counselling any declarations of war against the g
overnment of Prestimion and Dekkeret: not yet, at any rate. But I see now that we can afford to take greater risks, because the weapons at our disposal”—and he hefted the helmet—“are more substantial than I had earlier imagined. If Prestimion and Company attempt to harm us, we can fight back.”
“Ah!”
Mandralisca waited for the second one, glaring fiercely at Gaviral in expectation. But it failed to come.
After a moment he said, “We will go to Ni-moya then. You will reoccupy the procuratorial palace, although you will not, at any time, attempt to reclaim the title of Procurator. Your brothers will take possession of dwellings nearly as grand. For the present you will live there purely as private citizens, however, claiming authority only over your family’s own estates. Is that understood, milord Gaviral?”
“Does that mean we’re not to be regarded as lords any more?” said Gaviral. It was evident from his expression that that possibility was distressing to him.
“In the inwardness of your own households, you will still be the Lords of Zimroel. In your intercourse with the people of Ni-moya you will be the five princes of the House of Sambail, and nothing more—for the time being. Later on, milord, I have a finer title even than ‘Lord’ for you, but that will have to wait some while longer.”
An excited gleam came into Gaviral’s ugly face. He leaned forward eagerly. “And what would that finer title be?” he asked, though he already knew the answer.
“Pontifex,” said Mandralisca.
12
“My lord,” Dekkeret’s chamberlain said, “Prince Dinitak is here.”
“Thank you, Zeldor Luudwid. Ask him to come in.”
It amused him to hear the chamberlain promoting Dinitak to the principate. No such title had ever been conferred on him, and Dekkeret had no particular plan for doing so, nor had Dinitak shown the slightest desire to be raised to the nobility. He was still Venghenar Barjazid’s son, after all, a child of the Suvrael desert who once had collaborated with his disreputable father in swindling and exploiting travelers who had hired them as guides through that forbidding land. The Castle Mount aristocracy had accepted Dinitak as Dekkeret’s friend, because Dekkeret gave them no choice in that. But they would never abide Dekkeret’s thrusting him in among them as a member of their own exalted caste.
“Dinitak,” Dekkeret said, rising to embrace him.
In recent weeks Dekkeret had adopted as his headquarters one of the segments of the Methirasp Long Hall, which was not a hall at all, but rather a series of octagonal chambers within Lord Stiamot’s Library. The library itself was a continuous serpentine passageway that wound back and forth around the summit of Castle Mount to a total length of many miles, and, according to legend, contained every book that had ever been published in any world of the universe. At one point directly beneath the greensward of Vildivar Close it opened out into the twelve chambers of the Methirasp Hall. They were set aside for the use of scholars; but it was a rare day when more than one or two of them were occupied.
Dekkeret, coming upon the rooms in one of his explorations of the Castle, had taken an immediate fancy to them. They were lofty chambers two stories high, their walls covered with mural paintings of sea-dragons and fanciful beasts of the land, knights in tournament, natural wonders, and much else, all rendered in a delightful medieval style. Far overhead, brightly colored ceilings, done in vermilion and yellow and green and blue and covered with a fine, clear varnish that made them gleam like crystal, provided warm reflected light. Connecting corridors lined on both sides with rows of books led to the library proper. Dekkeret found himself coming back again and again to this pleasing sanctuary within the Castle, and eventually had chosen to have the segment of it known as Lord Spurifon’s Study closed off and made into an auxiliary office for himself. It was here that he received Dinitak Barjazid this day.
They talked quietly of idle things for a time—a visit Dinitak had lately made to the great city of Stee, and Dekkeret’s plans for a journey to that city and some of its neighbors on the Mount, and the like. It was not hard for Dekkeret to see that some suppressed inner tension was at work within his friend’s soul, but he let Dinitak set the pace for the conversation; and gradually he came around to the matter that had led him to seek this private audience with the Coronal.
“Have you seen much of Prince Teotas of late, your lordship?” Dinitak asked, with a new sort of intensity entering into his tone.
Dekkeret was jarred by the unexpected mention of Teotas’s name. The problem of Teotas had become a touchy one for him.
“I see him now and again, but not very often,” Dekkeret replied. “With the business of who is to be High Counsellor still up in the air, he seems to be avoiding me. Doesn’t want to refuse the post, but can’t bring himself to accept it, either. I blame Fiorinda for that.”
Dinitak’s cool penetrating eyes registered surprise. “Fiorinda? How is Fiorinda involved in your choice of a High Counsellor?”
“She’s married to the man I’ve chosen, isn’t she, Dinitak? Which gives us a layer of complication that I never took into account. I suppose you’re aware that she’s gone off to the Labyrinth to be with the Lady Varaile, leaving Teotas behind.” Dekkeret riffled irritatedly through the piles of papers on his desk. It bothered him to be discussing the increasingly troublesome Teotas problem, even with Dinitak. “I would never have supposed that she’d ask Teotas to decide between being High Counsellor and parting with his wife.”
“Is it as serious as that, do you think?”
Angrily Dekkeret swept the papers into a stack. “How do I know? Teotas barely speaks to me at all nowadays. But why else is he hesitating to accept the appointment? If Fiorinda has given him some sort of ultimatum about her living at the Labyrinth, he can’t very well stay here and become High Counsellor, not if he wants to keep his marriage together. Women!”
Dinitak smiled. “They are difficult creatures, are they not, my lord?”
“It never for an instant occurred to me that she’d place remaining as lady-in-waiting to Varaile above her husband’s chance to hold a position at the Castle that’s second only to my own. Meanwhile Septach Melayn has already taken himself off to the Labyrinth to be Prestimion’s High Spokesman and the post of High Counsellor goes unfilled here.—Teotas looks like a wreck, besides. All of this must be pulling him apart.”
“He looks very bad, yes,” Dinitak agreed. “But it’s my belief that his problem with Fiorinda is not the only thing that’s at work on him.”
“What are you saying? What else is going on?”
Dinitak’s gaze rested squarely on Dekkeret. “Teotas has sought my company more than once, recently. I think you know that he and I have never had much to do with each other. But now he is in pain and crying out for help, and he dares not go to you because of this High Counsellor business, for which he sees no resolution. So he has come to me instead. Hoping, perhaps, that I will speak to you about him.”
“As you are now doing. But what kind of help can I provide? You say he’s in pain. But if a man can’t make up his own mind about something as important as the High Counsellorship—”
“This has nothing to do with the High Counsellorship, my lord. Not in any direct way.”
Dekkeret, mystified and growing impatient now, said sharply, “Then what else can it be?”
“He is receiving sendings, Dekkeret. Night after night, the most terrible dreams, the most agonizing nightmares. It has reached the point where he’s afraid to allow himself to sleep.”
“Sendings? Sendings are benevolent things, Dinitak.”
“Sendings of the Lady, yes. But these are not from her. The Lady does not send dreams of monsters and demons who chase people across a blasted landscape. Nor does the Lady send you dreams that convince you of your own total worthlessness and make you believe that every act of your life has been fraudulent and contemptible. He says that some nights he awakens actually despising himself. Despising.”
Dekkeret began to toy fretful
ly with his papers again. “Teotas should see a dream-speaker, then, and get his head cleared around. By the Divine, Dinitak, this is maddening! I offer the most important post in my government to a man who seems to me to be eminently qualified for it, and now I discover that he can’t accept it because his wife won’t let him, and that he’s all in a fluster over a few bad dreams besides—! Well, it’s simple enough. I’ll retract my offer and Teotas can go scuttling down to the Labyrinth to be with Fiorinda. Maybe old Dembitave wants to be High Counsellor. Or perhaps I can drag Abrigant up here from Muldemar to take the job. Or else I suppose I can ask one of the younger princes, Vandimain, perhaps—”
“My lord,” said Dinitak, cutting in brusquely, “I remind you that I said Teotas was receiving sendings.”
“Which is a statement that makes no sense to me.”
“What I mean is that someone is thrusting these terrible dreams into the mind of Teotas from afar. You continue to think that the Lady of the Isle is the only person in the world with the capacity to enter someone’s sleeping mind.”
“Well? Isn’t that so?”
“Do you remember a certain helmet, Dekkeret, a little thing of metal mesh, that my late father used on you long ago when you were trekking with us through the Desert of Stolen Dreams in Suvrael? Do you recall a later version of the same device that I myself used in your presence, and Lord Prestimion used also, when we were fighting against the rebel Dantirya Sambail? That helmet gives one the capacity to enter minds at a great distance. Prestimion himself could confirm that, if you were to ask him.”
“But those helmets and all the documents associated with their construction and operation are kept under lock and key in the Treasury of the Castle. No one’s been near those things in years. Are you trying to tell me that they’ve been stolen?”
“Not at all, my lord.”
“Then why are we discussing them?”
“Because of the dreams Teotas is having.”