Dekkeret lifted both his hands in greeting. The towering Skandar, nearly half again as tall as the Coronal, knelt before him and saluted once more.
“My lord, you are welcome to Piliplok. Our city rejoices at your presence.”
Protocol now called for an exchange of small gifts. The Skandar had brought a surprisingly delicate necklace fashioned from finely interwoven sea-dragon bones, which Dekkeret placed around Fulkari’s neck, and Dekkeret offered him a rich brocaded mantle of Makroposopos manufacture, purple and green with the royal starburst and monogram at its center.
The ceremonial sharing of food in the Coronal’s cabin was the next order of ritual. This posed certain technical difficulties, since the Lord Stiamot had not been designed with Skandars in mind, and Kelmag Volvol could barely manage to negotiate the companionway that led belowdecks. And he had to stoop and crane his neck to fit within the royal cabin itself, which was roomy enough for Dekkeret and Fulkari but which the Lord Mayor Kelmag Volvol filled practically to overflowing. Septach Melayn and Gialaurys, who had accompanied them below, were forced to stand in the passage outside.
“I must begin this meeting with troublesome news, my lord,” the Skandar said as soon as the formalities were over.
“Concerning Ni-moya, is it?”
“Concerning Ni-moya, yes,” said Kelmag Volvol. He threw an uneasy glance toward the two men outside.—“It is a highly sensitive matter, my lord.”
“Nothing that needs to be hidden from the Grand Admiral Gialaurys and the High Spokesman Septach Melayn, I think,” Dekkeret replied.
“Well, then.” Kelmag Volvol looked acutely uncomfortable. “It is this, and I regret to be the bearer of such tidings. Your journey onward to Ni-moya: I must advise you against it. A cordon has been placed around the city and the territory immediately surrounding it, to a distance of some three hundred miles in all directions.”
Dekkeret nodded. It was as he had guessed: Mandralisca had reined in his original grandiose plans to claim all of Zimroel at the outset, and was limiting the sphere of his rebellion to an area he was easily capable of defending. But a rebellion was still a rebellion, even so.
“A cordon,” Dekkeret repeated thoughtfully, as though it were a mere nonsensical sound that conveyed nothing to him. “And what, I pray, does that mean, a cordon around Ni-moya?”
The pain in Kelmag Volvol’s great red-rimmed eyes was unmistakable. His four shoulders shifted about in keen embarrassment. “A zone, my lord, protected by military force, which officials of the imperial government are forbidden to enter, because it is now under the administration of the Lord Gaviral, Pontifex of Zimroel.”
A snort of astonishment came from Septach Melayn. “Pontifex, is he! Of Zimroel!”
And from Gialaurys: “We will flay him and nail his hide to the door of his own palace, my lord! We will—”
Dekkeret motioned to them both to be still.
“Pontifex,” he said, in the same wondering tone. “Not merely Procurator, the title his uncle Dantirya Sambail was content to hold, but Pontifex? Pontifex! Ah, very fine! Very bold!—He makes no claim to Prestimion’s own throne, does he? He is content only to rule over the western continent, our new Pontifex, beginning with the territory around Ni-moya? Why, then, I applaud his restraint!”
Skandars, Dekkeret remembered a moment too late, had virtually no capacity for irony. Kelmag Volvol reacted to Dekkeret’s lighthearted words with such a sputtering display of astonishment and distress that it was immediately necessary to assure him that the Coronal did indeed regard the developments in Ni-moya with the greatest concern.
“Which brother is this, this Gaviral?” Dekkeret said to Septach Melayn, who had lately been gathering information concerning these nephews of Dantirya Sambail.
“The eldest one. A small scheming man, with a certain rudimentary intelligence. The other four are little more than drunken beasts.”
“Yes,” said Dekkeret. “Like their father Gaviundar, the Procurator’s brother. I met him once, when he came to the Castle in Prestimion’s time as Coronal, sniveling after some favor having to do with land. An animal, he was. A great huge coarse vile-smelling hideous animal.”
“Who betrayed us at the battle of Stymphinor in the Korsibar war,” said Gialaurys darkly, “when Navigorn nearly cut our army to pieces and Gaviundar and his other brother Gaviad, our allies then, shamefully held back their troops. And his seed comes back to haunt us now!”
Dekkeret turned again to the Skandar, who looked baffled by all this talk of unknown battles, but was struggling to hide his confusion. “Tell me the rest of it. What territorial claims is this Gaviral actually making? Just Ni-moya, or is that only the beginning?”
“As we understand it down here,” Kelmag Volvol went on, “the Lord Gaviral—that is the title he uses, the Lord Gaviral—has decreed this entire continent independent of the imperial government. Ni-moya is apparently already under his control. Now he has sent ambassadors to the surrounding districts, explaining his purposes and asking for oaths of allegiance. A new constitution will shortly be announced. The Lord Gaviral soon will select the first Coronal of Zimroel. It is believed that he will name one of his brothers to the post.”
“Has the name of a certain Mandralisca been mentioned?” Dekkeret asked. “Does he figure in this in any way?”
“His signature was on the proclamation we received,” said Kelmag Volvol. “Count Mandralisca of Zimroel, yes, as privy counsellor to his majesty the Lord Gaviral.”
“Count, no less,” muttered Septach Melayn. “Count Mandralisca! Privy counsellor to his majesty the Pontifex Lord Gaviral! Has come a long way from the days when he was tasting the Procurator’s wine to see if it’d been poisoned, that one has!”
16
“You asked for me, your grace?” Thastain said.
Mandralisca nodded curtly. “Bring me the Shapeshifter, if you will, my good duke.”
“But he is gone, sir.”
“Gone? Gone?”
Mandralisca felt a momentary surge of fury and dismay so wildly intense that it astounded him with its force. Only for a moment; but in that moment it had seemed to him that he was being swept through the air in the teeth of a hurricane. It was a frightening overreaction, and not the first of its kind in recent days.
He hated these spells of soul-vertigo that had begun coming over him lately. He hated himself for succumbing to them. They were a mark of weakness.
The boy must see it, too. He was staring.
Mandralisca forced himself to say more calmly, “Gone where, Thastain?”
“Back to Piurifayne, I think, sir. Summoned home by the Danipiur to deliver his report, I believe.”
Stunning news. Mandralisca felt another whirlwind go roaring through his mind.
He groped for the riding crop that always lay on his desk, gripped its handle until his knuckles were white, shoved it aside. To quiet himself he went to the window and stared out. But that only made things worse, for he found himself looking into the rain. For the past three days Ni-moya had been pelted by surprising rains, a deluge beyond all expectation this late in the summer, when the long dry season of autumn and winter should be coming on. Everything beyond the window was a blank gray wall. The river, though it lay just below, could not be seen at all. Nothing there but gray, gray, gray. And the unending drumming of the rainfall against the great quartz window of his office had already begun to be maddening. Another day and it would have him screaming.
Calm. Stay calm.
But how? Dekkeret—the word had just come in—had landed safely in Piliplok, with many troops. And Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had taken himself back to Piurifayne for a chat with his queen.
“He left,” Mandralisca said, “and I wasn’t told? Why not? We had an important meeting scheduled for today, he and I.” The red tide of anger was mounting again. “The Metamorph ambassador unexpectedly sets out for home without troubling to stop in at my office to take his leave of the privy counsellor, and no o
ne says anything to me!”
“I had—no idea, sir—I never thought—”
“You never thought! You never thought! Exactly, Thastain: you never thought.”
He had wanted the words to sound icy-cold, but they came out as a kind of throttled screech. Mandralisca thought his head was going to explode. Khaymak Barjazid had told him just the other day that it was risky to be using the helmet as much as he was. Perhaps that might be so; perhaps it could be making him just a little unstable, he thought. Or maybe it was simply the tension he felt now that the hour of the long-dreamed-of war of independence was at hand. But he had never had so much difficulty maintaining his self-control. And this was no moment to be losing control.
Not with Dekkeret in Piliplok. And the Metamorph ambassador gone.
For the second time in a minute and a half Mandralisca fought back his own overloaded emotions and struggled to think things through.
The plan to fortify the entire coast against the Coronal had long since been scrapped. In the end Mandralisca had abandoned the idea on the grounds that it was one thing to invite the people of Zimroel to join the rulers of Ni-moya in a general declaration of independence, and something else again to ask them, this early in the uprising, actually to lift their hands against an anointed Coronal. Better to let the vengeance-hungry Shapeshifters handle Dekkeret, Mandralisca had decided, finally, after weeks of inner debate. But suddenly that decision was beginning to look like a significant strategic error, a gamble that had gone wrong. The force of Shapeshifter guerillas that Mandralisca had been negotiating to place in the forests along Dekkeret’s likely route north did not yet exist. And now the Shapeshifter ambassador himself had vanished. His essential ally. His secret weapon against the Alhanroel government.
The Danipiur had already been told the essence of Mandralisca’s proposal, civil freedom for her people in return for their military aid against Dekkeret. Perhaps Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had simply gone home to discuss with the Danipiur the final details involved in deploying the troops Mandralisca had requested.
Perhaps.
Why, though, had the Shapeshifter not said anything about that to him first? Possibly something much more disquieting was going on: something more like a Shapeshifter change of heart about the entire enterprise. What had seemed so simple earlier was now beginning to present unexpected challenges.
But anger was the wrong response, he knew. Fear, despair, anxiety—all useless. It was much too early in the campaign to give panic a foothold. There were always going to be surprises, setbacks, miscalculations.
In the softest tone he could manage Mandralisca said, “I should have been informed right away, Thastain. I regret that I wasn’t. But there’s nothing that can be done about that now, is there?—Is there, Thastain?”
“No, your grace.” The merest whisper.
The boy was white-faced and trembling. It seemed to be all he could do to meet Mandralisca’s gaze. Was he expecting to be beaten for his negligence? The riding crop, maybe? Mandralisca had not seen Thastain so fear-stricken since the early days at the desert headquarters out by the Plain of Whips.
But terrorizing the underlings would serve no useful purpose now. The sudden departure of Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp might or might not be a serious development, though at the very least it raised the possibility of major complications and confusions. But, no matter what the Shapeshifter might be up to, Mandralisca told himself, it was far from sensible just now to be alienating valuable members of his own staff. And Thastain was valuable. The boy was loyal; the boy was helpful; the boy was intelligent.
Mandralisca said, “What I want you to do now, Thastain, is to get yourself out into the Grand Bazaar, talk to one of the shopkeepers, tell him that I want him to put you in contact with some senior member of the Guild of Thieves.—You know about the guild of official thieves of Ni-moya, Thastain? How they operate in the bazaar in cooperation with the merchants, taking a certain regulated percentage of goods for themselves in return for guarding the place against greedy free-lance thieves who don’t understand when enough is enough?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Talk to the thieves, then. They have connections with the local Shapeshifter community. This city’s swarming with Shapeshifters, you know. There are more of them here than you’d ever believe, lurking all around the place. Get in touch with them. Use my name. If you have to throw money around, then throw it freely. Tell them that I have urgent need to send a message via one of them to the Danipiur—urgent need, Thastain—and when you find someone who’s willing to carry that message, bring him here to me. Is that clear, Thastain?”
Thastain nodded. But there was an odd look on the boy’s face.
Mandralisca said, “You don’t much care for Shapeshifters, do you, Thastain? Well, who does? But we need them. We need them, you understand? Their cooperation is necessary to the cause. So hold your nose and get yourself off to the bazaar, and don’t waste any time about it.” He smiled. The inner storm seemed to be passing; he felt almost like himself again. “—Oh, and on your way out tell Khaymak Barjazid that I want to see him in here, right away.”
Barjazid looked at the bunched-up mass of metal mesh in Mandralisca’s hand that was the thought-control helmet, then at Mandralisca, then at the helmet again. He had not replied at all to the request Mandralisca had just made.
“Well, Khaymak? You aren’t saying anything, and I’m waiting. Here: take the helmet. Get to work.”
“A direct attack on the mind of Lord Dekkeret? Do you think this is wise, excellence?”
“Would I have asked you to do it if I didn’t?”
“This is a considerable change of plan. We had agreed, I thought, that there would be no attempts undertaken against the Powers themselves.”
“There’ve been several considerable changes of plan lately,” Mandralisca said. “Certain concessions to financial and political realities have had to be made. We didn’t blockade the sea to keep the Coronal’s fleet from landing, though at one time we were talking about that. We didn’t set up military outposts up and down the coast, either. And we assumed we would be getting valuable help from Shapeshifter troops, but suddenly that seems to be in doubt also. And so Dekkeret is now in Piliplok and very soon will be heading this way. He’s brought an army with him.”
“May I remind you, your grace, we have an army too.”
“Ah, and will it fight? That’s the question, Khaymak: will it fight? What if Dekkeret comes marching up to our borders and says, ‘Here I am, your Coronal Lord,’ and our men fall down and start making starbursts to him? That’s a risk I don’t feel comfortable taking. Not while we have this.” He opened his clenched hand and held the helmet forth. “By the use of this I drove Prestimion’s brother over the edge of madness, and many another also. It’s time to go to work on Dekkeret. Take it, Khaymak. Put it on. Send your mind down to Piliplok and latch it onto Dekkeret’s, and begin taking him apart. It may be our only hope.”
Once more Khaymak Barjazid looked at the helmet in Mandralisca’s hand, but he made no move to reach out for it. Mildly he said, “It has been very clear for a long time, excellence, that your own powers of operating the helmet are superior to mine. Your greater intensity of spirit—your stronger force of character—”
“Are you telling me that you won’t do it, Khaymak?”
“Against such a powerful center of energy as the mind of Lord Dekkeret surely must be, it would perhaps be desirable that you be the one who—”
Mandralisca felt the whirlwinds starting up again within him. I must not allow that, he thought, clamping down. Stay calm. Calm. Calm.
Coldly, cuttingly, he said, “You told me only a few days ago that I may be using the helmet too much. And I do see certain signs of strain in myself that may very well be the result of just that.” His hand strayed toward the riding crop. “Don’t waste any more of my energy in discussing this, Khaymak. Take the helmet. Now. And go to work on Dekkeret with it.”
br /> “Yes, your grace,” Barjazid said, looking very unhappy indeed.
Carefully he affixed the helmet, closed his eyes, seemed to enter the trancelike state with which one operated the device. Mandralisca watched, fascinated. Even now the Barjazid helmet still seemed like a miraculous thing to him: such a flimsy little webwork of golden wires, and yet one could use it to reach out over thousands of miles, enter other minds, any minds, even those of a Pontifex or a Coronal, and impress one’s will—take control—
Several minutes had passed, now. Barjazid was perspiring. His face had grown flushed beneath its heavy Suvrael tan. His head was bowed, his shoulders hunched together in a sign of obvious stress. Had he reached Dekkeret? Was he sending beams of red fury into the Coronal’s helpless mind?
Another minute—another—
Barjazid looked up. With trembling hands he lifted the helmet from his brow.
“Well?” Mandralisca demanded.
“Very strange, your grace. Very.” His voice was hoarse and ragged. “I did reach Dekkeret. I’m sure I did. A Coronal’s mind—surely it’s like no other. But it was—defended. That’s the only term I can use. It was as if he was shielding himself in some way against my entry.”
“Is this possible, technically speaking?”
“Yes, of course—if he’s wearing a helmet too, and knows how to use it. And he does, of course, have access to helmets, the ones confiscated from my brother long ago, that have been locked away at the Castle. It’s certainly possible that Dekkeret has brought one of those with him. But that he could use it with such mastery—that he would so much as know how to use it at all—”
“And that he would happen to be wearing it at the exact moment when you tried to attack him,” Mandralisca said. “Yes. A coincidence like that is the most unlikely thing of all. Maybe you were right, just now, that you simply don’t have enough inner force, mental strength, whatever it is, to break through Dekkeret’s defenses. Let me try, I suppose.”