This was, in theory, Dekkeret’s inaugural grand processional, but he paid no visits to any of the river towns, merely stood in the bow of the Lord Stiamot and waved to the assembled populace as he went sailing by. Even on a grand processional it was impossible for the Coronal to call at any but the most major cities, or else he would spend all the rest of his days going from place to place, growing fat on mayors’ banquets, and never see the Castle again. And the business of Mandralisca and the Five Lords was too pressing to permit any such stops now, even at such relatively important places as Port Saikforge, Stenwamp, or Gablemorn.
On and on they went, town after town, through the placid Zimr valley: Dambmuir, Orgeliuse, Impemond, Haunfort Major; Cerinor and Semirod and Molagat; Thibbildorn, Coranderk, Maccathar. Septach Melayn, who had appointed himself the keeper of the maps, called off each name as the towns came into view. But they all looked alike, anyway—the waterfront promenade, the pier where throngs of riverboat passengers waited for the next vessel, the warehouses and bazaars, the dense plantings of palms and alabandinas and tanigales. As one place after another flowed by him in a pleasant blur, Dekkeret found himself reflecting yet again on the sheer immensity of the great world that was Majipoor: the multitude of its provinces, its myriad cities, its billions of people, spread out over three great continents so huge that it would be a lifetime’s task, and then some, to traverse them all. Here in this densely populated valley, what did Ni-moya matter, or the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount? To these people, the lower Zimr valley was a world unto itself, a little universe, even, swarming with life and activity. And yet there were dozens, scores, hundreds of such little universes everywhere in the world.
It was a miracle, he thought, that a planet so vast and populous had managed so well to live at peace with itself, at least until these troublesome recent times. And would live peacefully again, he swore, once the poisonous irruption of evil into the world that Mandralisca and his ilk represented had been contained and cauterized away.
“This is Gourkaine,” said Septach Melayn one bright cloudless morning, as yet another river town came into view.
“And of what significance is Gourkaine, then?” Dekkeret asked, for Septach Melayn had uttered the name with a certain emphasis and flourish.
“Of none at all, my lord, except that it is the town just downriver from Salvamot, and Salvamot is where our friends the Five Lords of Zimroel await us. So we are almost at our goal.”
Salvamot was a town just like all the others, except that no throngs of eager citizens had gathered at the piers to hail the Coronal when his armada was nearing their city, as had been the case everywhere else thus far, even at nearby Gourkaine. Nor were there any banners flying that bore Lord Dekkeret’s portrait on them and the royal colors. Only a small group of municipal officials could be seen, collected in a tight and uneasy-looking knot by the main quay.
“It is as though we have crossed some sort of border,” said Dekkeret. “But we are still thousands of miles from Ni-moya. Does the power of the Five Lords reach all the way down to here, I wonder?”
“Bear in mind, my lord, that Dantirya Sambail was a frequent visitor to his lands here,” Septach Melayn said, “and his kinsmen also, I’d wager. These people here must feel a special loyalty to that tribe now. And also, look you there—”
He indicated a quay just upriver from the town. A dozen or more big riverboats were docked there, and from their masts fluttered the long crimson banners of the Sambailid clan, with their blood-red crescent-moon emblem emblazoned upon them. It appeared that other such ships lay just to the north, around a slight bend that the Zimr made here. So the Five Lords, or some of them, at any rate, were already on the scene here in Salvamot, and with an armada of their own. Small wonder that the local citizenry would greet the arriving Coronal with some degree of restraint.
A detachment of the Coronal’s guard preceded Lord Dekkeret ashore. Soon the guard-captain returned accompanied by a short, thick-necked man in black robes and a golden chain of office, who announced himself to be Veroalk Timaran, the Chief Justiciar of the Municipality of Salvamot—“I would hold the title of mayor, in another place, my lord,” he informed Dekkeret gravely—and expressed his great delight and satisfaction that his city had been chosen as the site of this historic meeting. He bowed so extravagantly to the Lady Fulkari that veins bulged out on the broad column of his neck and his face turned red. He would, he said, escort the Coronal and his companions to the estate of the Lord Gavahaud in person. The Lord Gavahaud had provided floaters for the royal party, said the Justiciar Veroalk Timaran, and they were waiting a little way beyond.
There were just three small vehicles, with a capacity of perhaps fifteen occupants, and scarcely any room for the Coronal’s bodyguard.
Dekkeret said amiably, “We have brought our own floaters, your honor. We prefer to travel in those. I would be pleased to have you ride beside me in my own.”
The Chief Justiciar had not been prepared for this, and he seemed flustered, perhaps not so much at the distinction of being asked to ride in the Coronal’s personal floater as at the realization that the day was already departing from the script that had been provided him. But he was in no position to place himself in opposition to the Coronal’s wishes, and he watched in what seemed to be mounting consternation as Dekkeret’s men proceeded to unload a score of floaters from the flagship, and as many more from the second vessel, and went on to unload still more from the third: enough vehicles to transport the Coronal’s entire corps of guardsmen, and a good many of the imperial troops as well.
“If you will, your honor,” said Dekkeret, beckoning the Chief Justiciar Veroalk Timaran toward a floater bearing the starburst crest.
Salvamot—city, town, whatever it was—thinned out swiftly once they were away from the river, and very shortly Dekkeret found himself riding through flat open country studded with sparse stands of slender trees that had russet trunks and purple leaves, and then making a winding ascent in more heavily forested terrain toward a low plateau to the east. The domain of the Lord Gavahaud, said the Justiciar, lay up there.
Fulkari rode at Dekkeret’s side, and Dinitak also. Dekkeret would gladly have left her behind to wait for him at Piliplok, for he had no idea what danger awaited him at this conference, or whether it would end in some sort of armed conflict. But she would not hear of it. The Five Lords, she said, would not dare touch an anointed Coronal. And even if they attempted any violence, she said—and it was clear that she saw the peril too—what sort of royal consort would she be, to shrink back into safety while her lord was at risk? She would rather die bravely with him, she said, than carry a cowardly widowhood back with her to the Castle.
“There will be no widowhoods for you just yet,” Dekkeret told her. “These are men who lack all courage, and we will quickly have them kneeling to us.”
Privately he was not so certain of that. But that made no difference. Fulkari would not be denied, and, come what may, she would be with him to the end of this.
Septach Melayn was in the second floater, and Gialaurys in the third, and the others followed close behind. It was a considerable force, hundreds of armed men, and others ready at the pier should any signal of distress go up. If we are riding into ambush, Dekkeret thought, we will make them pay a good price for their treachery.
But all seemed peaceful enough as the floaters entered the great arched gateway of Mereminene Hall. There were crescent-moon banners galore here, and a host of men in the green Sambailid livery, some of them armed, but only in the ordinary way of men-at-arms who guard a great estate. Dekkeret saw no lurking battalions, no cache of waiting weaponry.
A tall thickset red-haired man, strikingly ugly, a preening strutting figure in sweeping maroon cloak and foppish yellow tights that were much too tight, came forward with a clanking of golden spurs. He made a grand excessive bow to Dekkeret and Fulkari, culminating in exaggerated starburst salutes as he straightened up. “My lord—my lady—you do us great honor
. I am the Lord Gavahaud, whose pleasure it is to show you to the accommodations that will be yours during this your stay. My lordly brother will be pleased to greet you afterward, when you are installed.”
“What kind of accent is that?” Fulkari asked, under her breath. “He utters everything through his nose. Is that the Ni-moyan way of speech? I’ve never heard the like.”
“False grandeur is what they speak here,” said Dekkeret. “We must be careful not to snicker, whatever the provocation.”
The guest-lodge of Mereminene Hall was a place of shining adamantine floors and vermilion-tiled walls and faceted windows intricately set in lead, easily worthy of housing a visiting Coronal. The main house must surely be even grander, Dekkeret thought. And this was a mere country estate. Old Dantirya Sambail had not been one to stint, it seemed. But why would he? In his time he had been king of Zimroel, effectively, and no doubt had wanted to equal in a single generation all that the Coronals of Castle Mount had built for themselves over thousands of years.
Nor was there any stinting of hospitality by this Gavahaud, either. The lodge swarmed with platoons of bowing servants; rare wines and exotic fruits aplenty were supplied for the delectation of the guests if they cared to refresh themselves upon arrival; their bed-linens were of the finest manufacture, glowing warm-hued silks and satins.
A chamberlain came within an hour with word that there would be a formal dinner that evening, adding that it was the wish of the Lord Gaviral that no discussions of serious matters should be expected until the following day.
The Lord Gaviral—he who styled himself Pontifex of Zimroel—came to the guest-lodge an hour after that, alone, simply dressed, unarmed, and on foot. Dekkeret was surprised at how small a man this Gaviral was, no taller than Prestimion and much less solidly built: flimsy-framed, in fact, with the constantly moving eyes and twitching lips of a man who is uneasy in his spirit. He had heard that these Sambailids were massive hulking ugly men as the old Procurator and his brothers had been, and certainly Gavahaud fit that description, but not this one, who had some of the ugliness but none of the size. Only by his rank plume of orange-red hair and his broad, wide-nostriled nose was his kinship with the tribe of Dantirya Sambail confirmed.
But he was courtly enough, speaking well and making every show of respect for his royal visitor, and behaving not in any way like one who has proclaimed himself to be a lord and even a Pontifex in defiance of all the natural order of things. He inquired merely whether the Coronal found his lodgings suitable, and hoped that his lordship’s appetite would be equal to the feast that awaited him. “I regret that two of my brothers have been unable to join us for this meeting,” said Gaviral. “The Lord Gavinius is unwell, and could not leave Ni-moya. The Lord Gavdat, who practices the study of magery, has remained behind as well, because he is in the midst of important prognosticatory calculations that he feels must not be interrupted even for so important a gathering as this.”
“I regret their absence,” said Dekkeret courteously, although Septach Melayn had already told him that Gavinius was a revolting drunken fool, and the other one, Gavdat, evidently was a fool of a different kind, forever lost in the claptrap of geomantic studies. But courtesy would cost him nothing; and he was only too well aware that it made no difference whether he met with one Sambailid brother, or five, or five hundred. Mandralisca was the force to reckon with. And of Mandralisca nothing at all so far had been said.
It was evening, now. Banquet time.
As Dekkeret had suspected, the late Procurator had indeed lived here on a truly regal scale. The main house was a massive stone pile with some seven or ten great-windowed halls radiating from its core, and the banquet hall was the greatest of all, a tremendous gallery of rugged antique design, with bare red beams of bright thembar-wood, and rough heavy walls of mortared boulders piled to an astounding height. And this at the country estate of a provincial lordling; what was the procuratorial palace at Ni-moya like, Dekkeret wondered, if Dantirya Sambail’s mere country retreat had been a place of this sort?
The big room was full: the entire court of the Five Lords must be here, Dekkeret thought. Protocol was somewhat strained at the high-table seating. Dekkeret, as Coronal, was entitled to the center position, with Fulkari at his side. But the Lord Gaviral claimed at least for the time being to be the Pontifex of this continent, whatever that meant, and the Lord Gavahaud his brother, as the actual owner of Mereminene Hall, was the putative host of the meeting. Which one of them would sit at the Coronal’s right hand? There was much murmuring, and in the end Gavahaud deferred to Gaviral, and let him take the seat of honor beside Dekkeret, but not before some further confusion involving the third brother, the Lord Gavilomarin, who had appeared now also, a blinking, watery-eyed lump of a man with a blithering smile and a general air of witlessness about him. He took the central seat without asking, apparently choosing it at random, and had to be moved along toward the end of the dais, down by Septach Melayn and Gialaurys. Dinitak was seated at the opposite end.
Where, Dekkeret asked himself, was the infamous Mandralisca?
His name had not so much as been mentioned thus far. That seemed very odd. In the awkward first moments after taking his seat Dekkeret said to Gaviral, by way of having anything to say at all, “And your privy counsellor, of whom I’ve heard so much? Surely he is here tonight, but where?”
“He dislikes the prominence of the dais,” said Gaviral. “You will find him over there on the left, against the wall.”
Dekkeret glanced in the direction Gaviral indicated, far across the room to an ordinary table set amidst many others. Though he had never seen Mandralisca, he recognized him at once. He stood out from all those around him like death at a wedding feast: a pallid, somber, harsh-faced, thin-lipped man garbed in a tight-fitting suit of shining black leather that was altogether without ornament except for some large, bright pendant of gold, no doubt an emblem of office, on a chain around his neck. His hard, glittering eyes were trained directly on Dekkeret, nor did he flinch away as the Coronal’s gaze came to rest on him.
So that is Mandralisca, Dekkeret thought. After all this time, he and I are no more than a hundred feet apart.
He found himself fascinated by the man’s chilly, repellent face and sinister aura. There was an unquestionable magnetism about him, a diabolical force. Tremendous demonic power of will was evident in his features. Dekkeret understood now how this man, the embodiment of all that had bedeviled Prestimion throughout the years of his otherwise glorious reign, could have caused so much trouble in the world for so many years. Here was a truly dark soul; here was one whose very existence made one wonder about the Divine’s purpose in creating him.
After a long moment the contact between Majipoor’s Coronal and the Lord of Zimroel’s privy counsellor broke, and it was Mandralisca who was the first to look away, in order to make some remark to his table-companions. There were three of those: a round-faced common-looking man of middle years or a little more, a handsome, open-faced lad with golden-white hair who could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen, and a small, swarthy-skinned, squinch-eyed fellow who beyond any question had to be Dinitak’s despised helmet-making uncle, Khaymak Barjazid of Suvrael.
Servitors brought wine around, and filled all their bowls. Dekkeret wondered idly whether Dantirya Sambail’s old custom of taking a poison-taster with him wherever he went might not have been appropriate here. Though it seemed absurd, he put his hand over Fulkari’s when she reached in an automatic way for her wine-bowl, and held her back.
She gave him a questioning look.
“We must wait for the toast,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh. Of course,” she said, looking a little abashed.
The Lord Gaviral was on his feet, now, wine-bowl in his hand. The hall grew silent. “To amity,” he said. “To harmony. To concord. To the eternal friendship of the continents.”
He looked toward Dekkeret and drank. Dekkeret, realizing now that h
is wine had been poured from the same flask as Gaviral’s, rose and returned the toast with equally empty generalities, and drank also. It was superb wine. Whatever else would happen here at Mereminene Hall, they were not going to be poisoned this evening, he decided.
All around the room, the Sambailid folk were on their feet—all of them men, Dekkeret noted—holding high their bowls and calling out, “To amity! To harmony! To concord!” Even Mandralisca had joined the toast, although what he held in his hand was a water-glass, not a wine-bowl.
“Your privy counsellor doesn’t care for wine, eh?” Dekkeret said to Gaviral.
“Abhors it, in fact. Will not touch the stuff. Had to drink too much of it, I suppose, when he was taster to my uncle the Procurator.”
“I take your point. If I thought there might be poison in every wine-bowl that was handed me, I might lose my taste for drink myself, after a year or two,” said Dekkeret, and laughed, and took another sip of his own.
It still seemed very odd to him that Mandralisca had not come up to be introduced. The merest provincial mayor was ever eager to force his name and pedigree on a visiting Coronal; and here was a man who held the rank of privy counsellor to someone who gave himself the title of lord, and claimed authority over all of Zimroel, and he chose instead to nest among his own companions at a far table. But that was Mandralisca’s style, apparently: to lurk in the background and allow someone else the visible glory. That was how he had operated in Dantirya Sambail’s time, and that seemed to be how he operated now.
Dekkeret did remark again on Mandralisca’s evident shyness to Gaviral at one point in the evening, saying that it was strange that he was not at the high table.
“He is a man of very humble birth, you know,” Gaviral said piously. “He feels it is not his place to be up here with those of us whose ancestry is so splendid. But you will meet him tomorrow, my lord, when we all gather in the meadow to explore the details of the treaty we wish to propose.”