“That’s imbecilic. Does he seriously think his city is a hotbed of crazed assassins? And what a damnable nuisance, having these troops marching around with us everywhere we go.”
“Agreed. But if he feels he has to bend over backwards in the name of caution, we’ll have to humor him. It would give needless offense if we objected.”
Dinitak shrugged and let the matter drop. Dekkeret was only too well aware of how little tolerance there was in his friend’s makeup for folly of any sort, and plainly this business of providing unneeded guards for the visitors from Castle Mount fell into that category. But Dinitak was able to see that having the guards around would be just a harmless annoyance. And he understood when to yield to Dekkeret in matters of official protocol.
They settled quickly into their hostelry, where Dekkeret was given the capacious set of rooms that was usually reserved for the Coronal, and Dinitak a lesser but comfortable apartment one floor below. In early afternoon they set out on their first call, a visit to Dekkeret’s mother, the Lady Taliesme. Dekkeret had not seen her in many months. Although her son’s position as heir-designate to the throne entitled her to a suite of rooms at the Castle, she preferred to remain in Normork most of the time—still living, actually, in the same little dwelling in Old Town that their family had occupied when Dekkeret was a boy.
She lived there alone, now. Dekkeret’s father, a traveling merchant who had had indifferent success plodding to and fro with his satchels of goods amongst the Fifty Cities, had died a decade earlier, still fairly young but worn out, defeated, even, by the long laborious struggle that his life had been. He had never been able quite to make himself believe that his son Dekkeret had somehow attracted the attention of Lord Prestimion himself and had found his way into the circle of lordlings around the Coronal at the Castle. That Dekkeret had been made a knight-initiate was almost beyond his capacity to comprehend; and when the Coronal had raised him to the rank of prince, his father had taken the news merely as a bizarre joke.
Dekkeret often wondered what he would have done if he had come to him and announced, “I have been chosen to be the next Coronal, father.” Laughed in his son’s face, most likely. Or slapped him, even, for mocking his father with such nonsense. But he had not lived long enough for that.
Taliesme, though, had handled her son’s improbable ascent, and the stunning elevation of her own position that necessarily had accompanied it, with remarkable calmness. It was not that she had ever expected Dekkeret to become a knight of the Castle, let alone a prince. And undoubtedly not even in her dreams had she imagined him as Coronal. Nor was she the sort of doting mother who blandly accepted any success that came to her son as nothing more than his proper due, inevitable and well deserved.
But a simple and powerful faith in the Divine had been her guide throughout all her life. She did not quarrel with destiny. And so nothing ever surprised her; whatever came her way, be it pain and sorrow or glory beyond all measure, was something that had been preordained, something that one accepted without complaint on the one hand and without any show of astonishment on the other. Plainly it must have been intended from the beginning of time that Dekkeret would be Coronal someday—and therefore that she herself would finish her days as Lady of the Isle of Sleep, a Power of the Realm. The Coronal’s mother was always given that greatly auspicious post. Very well: so be it. She had not anticipated any such things, of course; but if they happened anyway, well, their happening had to be viewed in retrospect as something as natural and unsurprising as the rising of the sun in the east each day.
What surprised Dinitak was the meanness of the Lady Taliesme’s house, a lopsided little place with sagging window-frames amidst a jumble of small buildings that might have been five thousand years old, on a dark, crooked street of uneven gray-green cobbled pavement close to the center of Old Town. What sort of home was this for the mother of the next Coronal?
“Yes, I know,” Dekkeret said, grinning. “But she likes it here. She’s lived in this house for forty years and it means more to her than ten Castles ever could. I’ve bought new furniture for her that’s costlier than what was here before, and nowadays she wears clothing of a sort that my father could never have afforded for her, but otherwise nothing in the least has changed. Which is exactly as she wants it to be.”
“And the people around her? Don’t they know they’re living next door to the future Lady of the Isle? Doesn’t she know that herself?”
“I have no idea what the neighbors know. I suspect that to them she’s just Taliesme, the widow of the merchant Orvan Pettir. And as for herself—”
The door opened.
“Dekkeret,” said the Lady Taliesme. “Dinitak. How good to see you both again.”
Dekkeret embraced his mother lovingly and with great care, as though she were dainty and fragile, and might break if hugged too enthusiastically. In fact he knew she was not half so fragile as he fancied her to be; but none the less she was a small-framed woman, light-boned and petite. Dekkeret’s father had not been large either. From boyhood onward Dekkeret had always felt like some kind of gross overgrown monster who had unaccountably been deposited by prankish fate in the home of those two diminutive people.
Taliesme was wearing a gown of unadorned ivory silk, and her glistening silver hair was bound by a simple, slender gold circlet. Dekkeret had brought gifts for her that were of the same austere taste, a glossy little dragonbone pendant, and a cobweb-light shimmering headscarf made in distant Gabilorn, and a smooth little ring of purple jade from Vyrongimond, and two or three other things of that sort. She received them all with evident pleasure and gratitude, but put them away as swiftly as politeness would permit. Taliesme had never coveted treasures of that sort in the days when they had been poor, and she gave no sign of having more than a casual interest in them now.
They talked easily, over tea and biscuits, of life at the Castle; she inquired after Lord Prestimion and Lady Varaile and their children and—briefly, very briefly—mentioned the Lady Fulkari also; she spoke of Septach Melayn and other Council members, and asked about Dekkeret’s current duties at the court, very much as though she were of that court herself in every fiber of her body rather than the mere widow of an unimportant provincial merchant. She referred knowingly, too, to recent events at the palace in Normork, the dismissal of a minister who was overfond of his wine and the birth of Count Considat’s heir and other matters of that sort; twenty years ago she would have had no more knowledge of such things than she did of the private conversations of the Shapeshifter wizards in their wickerwork capital in distant Piurifayne.
It gave Dekkeret great delight to see the way the Lady Taliesme was continuing to grow into the role that destiny was forcing upon her. He had spent almost half his life, now, among the princes of the Castle, and was no longer the provincial boy he had been, that long-ago day in Normork, when he first had come to Prestimion’s notice. His mother had not had an opportunity for the same sort of education in the ways of the mighty. Yet she was learning, somehow. Essentially she remained as artless and unassuming as ever; but she was nonetheless going to be, at some time not very far in the future, a Power of the Realm, and he could see how capably she was making her accommodation to the strange and altogether unanticipated enhancement of her life that was heading her way.
A pleasant, civilized chat, then: a mother, her visiting son, the son’s friend. But gradually Dekkeret became aware of suppressed tensions in the room, as though a second conversation, unspoken and unacknowledged, was drifting surreptitiously in the air above them:
—Will the Pontifex live much longer, do you think?
—You know that that is something I don’t dare think about, mother.
—But you do, though. As do I. It can’t be helped.
He was certain that some such secret conversation was going on within her now, here amidst the clink of teacups and the polite passing of trays of biscuits. Calm and sane and stable as she was, and ever-tranquil in the face of destiny?
??s decrees, even so there was no way she could avoid casting her thoughts forward to the extraordinary transformation that fate would soon be bringing to the merchant’s son of Normork and to his mother. The starburst crown was waiting for him, and the third terrace of the Isle of Sleep for her. She would be something other than human if thoughts of such things did not wander into her mind a dozen times a day.
And into his own.
4
Already, in his mind’s eye, Thastain could see the blackened timbers of the house of the Vorthinar lord crumbling in the red blaze of the fire they would set. As it deserved. He could not get his mind around the enormity of what he had seen. It was bad enough to have rebelled against the Five Lords; but to consort with Metamorphs as well—! Those were evils almost beyond Thastain’s comprehension.
Well, they had found what they had come here to find. Now, though, came disagreement over the nature of their next move.
Criscantoi Vaz insisted that they had to go back and report their discovery to Count Mandralisca, and let him work out strategy from there. But some of the men, most notably Agavir Toymin of Pidruid in western Zimroel, spoke out passionately in favor of an immediate attack. The rebel keep was supposed to be destroyed: very well, that was what they should set about doing, without delay. Why let someone else have the glory? Assuredly the Five Lords would richly reward the men who had rid them of this enemy. It was senseless to hang back at this point, with the headquarters of the foe right within their reach.
Thastain was of that faction. The proper thing to do now, he thought, was to make their way down that hillside, creeping as warily as that sharp-toothed helgibor, and get going on the job of starting the fire without further dithering.
“No,” Criscantoi Vaz said. “We’re only a scouting party. We’ve got no authority to attack. Thastain, run back to the camp and tell the Count what we’ve found.”
“Stay where you are, boy,” said Agavir Toymin, a burly man who was notorious for his blatant currying of favor with the Lord Gaviral and the Lord Gavinius. To Criscantoi Vaz he said, “Who put you in charge of this mission, anyway? I don’t remember that anybody named you our commander.” There was sudden sharpness in his tone, and no little heat.
“Nor you, so far as I know.—Run along, Thastain. The Count must be notified.”
“We’ll notify him that we’ve found the keep and destroyed it,” said Agavir Toymin. “What will he do, whip us for carrying out what we’ve all come here to do? It’s three miles from here to the Count’s camp. By the time the boy has gone all the way back there, the wind will have carried our scent to the Shapeshifters down below, and there’ll be a hillside of defenders between us and the keep, just waiting for us to descend. No: what we need to do is get the job over with and be done with it.”
“I tell you, we are in no way authorized—” Criscantoi Vaz began, and there was heat in his voice too, and a glint of sudden piercing anger in his eyes.
“And I tell you, Criscantoi Vaz—” Agavir Toymin said, putting his forefinger against Criscantoi Vaz’s breastbone and giving a sharp push.
Criscantoi Vaz’s eyes blazed. He slapped the finger aside.
That was all it took, one quick gesture and then another, to spark a wild conflagration of wrath between them. Thastain, watching in disbelief, saw their faces grow dark and distorted as all common sense deserted them both, and then they rushed forward, going at each other like madmen, snarling and shoving and heaving and throwing wild punches. Others quickly joined the fray. Within seconds a crazy melee was in progress, eight or nine men embroiled, swinging blindly, grunting and cursing and bellowing.
Amazing, Thastain thought. Amazing! It was ridiculous behavior for a scouting party. They might just as well have hoisted the banner of the Sambailid clan at the edge of the cliff, the five blood-red moons on the pale crimson background, and announced with a flourish of trumpets to those in the keep below that enemy troops were camped above them, intending a surprise attack.
And to think of the calm, judicious Criscantoi Vaz, a man of such wisdom and responsibility, allowing himself to get involved in a thing like this—!
Thastain wanted no part of this absurd quarrel himself, and quickly moved away. But as he came around the far side of the struggling knot of men he found himself suddenly face to face once again with Sudvik Gorn, who also had kept himself apart from the fray. The Skandar loomed up in front of him like a mountainous mass of coarse auburn fur. His eyes glowed vengefully. His four huge hands clenched and unclenched as if they already were closing about Thastain’s throat.
“And now, boy—”
Thastain looked frantically around. Behind him lay the sharp drop of the hillside, with a camp of armed enemies at its foot. Ahead of him was the infuriated and relentless Skandar, determined now to vent his choler. He was trapped.
Thastain’s hand went to the pommel of the hunting knife at his waist. “Keep back from me!”
But he wondered how much of a thrust would be required to penetrate the thick walls of muscle beneath the Skandar’s coarse pelt, and whether he had the strength for it, and what the Skandar would succeed in doing to him in the moments before he managed to strike. The little hunting knife, Thastain decided, would be of not the slightest use against the huge man’s great bulk.
It all seemed utterly hopeless. And Criscantoi Vaz, somewhere in the middle of that pack of frenzied lunatics, could do nothing to help him now.
Sudvik Gorn started for him, growling like a mollitor coming toward its prey. Thastain muttered a prayer to the Lady.
And then, for the second time in ten minutes, rescue came unexpectedly.
“What is this we have here?” said a quiet, terrifying voice, a controlled, inexorable voice that seemed to emerge out of nowhere like a metal spring uncoiling from some concealed machine. “Brawling, is that it? Among yourselves? You’ve lost your minds, have you?” It was a voice with edges of steel. It cut through everything like a razor.
“The Count!” came an anguished sighing cry from half a dozen throats at once, and all fighting ceased instantaneously.
Mandralisca had given no indication that he intended to follow them to this place. So far as anyone knew, he planned to remain behind in his tent while they went in search of the Vorthinar lord’s stronghold. But here he was, all the same, he and his bandy-legged little aide-de-camp Jacomin Halefice and a bodyguard of half a dozen swordsmen. The men of the scouting party, caught like errant children with smudges of jam on their faces, stood frozen, staring in horror at the fearsome and sinister privy counsellor to the Five Lords.
The Count was a lean, rangy man, somewhat past middle years, whose every movement was astonishingly graceful, as though he were a dancer. But no dancer had ever had so frightening a face. His lips were hard and thin, his eyes had a cold glitter, his cheekbones jutted like whetted blades. A thin white vertical scar bisected one of them, the mark of some duel of long ago. As usual he wore a close-fitting full-body garment of supple, well-oiled black leather that gave him the shining, sinuous look of a serpent. Nothing broke its smoothness except the golden symbol of his high office dangling on his breast, the five-sided paraclet that signified the power of life and death that he wielded over the uncountable millions whom the Five Lords of Zimroel regarded, illicitly, as their subjects.
Shrouded in an awful silence now did Mandralisca move among them, going unhurriedly from man to man, peering long into each one’s eyes with that basilisk gaze from which you could not help but flinch. Thastain felt his guts churning as he awaited the moment when his turn would come.
He had never feared anyone or anything as much as he feared Count Mandralisca. There always seemed to be a cold crackling aura around the man, an icy blue shimmer. The mere sight of him far down some long hallway inspired awe and dread. Thastain’s knees had turned to water when Criscantoi Vaz had told him, after selecting him for this mission, that it would be headed by none other than the formidable privy counsellor himself.
It was unimaginable, of course, to decline such an assignment, not if he hoped to rise to a post of any distinction in the service of the Five Lords. But throughout the whole of the journey out of the Sambailid domain and up into this region of forests and grassland where the rebels held sway he had tried to shrink himself down into invisibility whenever the Count’s glance ventured in his direction. And now—now—to be compelled to look him straight in the eye—
It was agonizing, but it was over quickly. Count Mandralisca paused before Thastain, studied him the way one might study some little insect of no particular interest that was walking across a table in front of one, and moved on to the next man. Thastain sagged in relief.
“Well,” Mandralisca said, halting in front of Criscantoi Vaz. “A little bit of knockabout stuff, was it? Purely for fun? I would have thought better of you, Criscantoi Vaz.”
Criscantoi Vaz said nothing. He did not flinch from Mandralisca’s gaze in any way. He stood stiffly upright, a statue rather than a man.
A sudden gleam like the flicker of a lightning-bolt came into the Count’s eyes and the riding crop that was always in Mandralisca’s hand lashed out with blinding speed, a scornful backhand stroke. A burning red line sprang up on Criscantoi Vaz’s cheek.
Thastain, watching, recoiled from the blow as if he himself had been struck. Criscantoi Vaz was a sturdy-spirited man of much presence, of great sagacity, of considerable quiet strength. Thastain looked upon him almost as a father. And to see him whipped like this, in front of everyone—
But Criscantoi Vaz showed scarcely any reaction beyond a brief blinking of his eyes and a brief wince as the riding crop struck him. He held his upright stance without moving at all, not even putting his hand to the injured place. It was as if he had been utterly paralyzed by the shame of having been discovered by the Count in such a witless fracas.