“I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said, making an attempt to sound conciliatory. “You’re the best friend I have in the world, Fulkari. It doesn’t strike me as being out of line for me to ask you if you’re going to marry a man you’re obviously in love with. But if it bothers you so much to talk about these things, I’ll stop. All right?” Fulkari cast the towel aside and walked back toward her. She sat down once more beside her. The storm seemed to have passed. After a little bit Keltryn said, eyes bright with fresh curiosity, “What is it like, Fulkari?”
“With him, you mean?”
“With anyone. I don’t have any real idea, you know. I haven’t ever—”
“No!” said Fulkari, genuinely amazed. “Are you serious? Never? Not at all?”
“No. Never.”
Fulkari appeared to be having trouble believing that. It had seemed harmless enough a thing to admit, but Keltryn found herself wishing that she could call back her own words. She felt herself blushing all over. Ashamed of her innocence, ashamed to be naked like this now with her own sister, ashamed of the thinness of her thighs, the boyish flatness of her buttocks, the meagerness of her small, high breasts. Fulkari, sitting here face to face with her, looked by comparison like some goddess of womanhood.
But Fulkari’s tone was gentle, loving, tender as she said, “I have to tell you that this is a real surprise. Someone as outgoing and lively as you—taking a fencing class with a bunch of boys, no less—I thought, certainly she’s been with two or three by now, maybe even more—”
Keltryn shook her head. “Not so. Not one. Nobody at all.”
With a twinkle Fulkari said, “Don’t you think it’s time, then?”
“I’m only seventeen, Fulkari.”
“I was sixteen, the first time. And I thought I was getting a slow start.”
“Sixteen. Well!” Keltryn tossed her head, shaking water from the moist red-gold curls. “But we’ve always been different, you and me. I’m much more of a tomboy than you ever were, I bet.” She leaned close to Fulkari and said in a low voice, “Who was it?”
“Madjegau.”
“Madjegau?” The name emerged in such a derisive shriek that she clapped her hand over her own mouth. “But he was such a—nincompoop, Fulkari!”
“Of course he was. But they can be nincompoops and still be attractive, you know. Especially when you’re sixteen.”
“I’ve never felt much attraction for nincompoops, I have to confess.”
“You wouldn’t understand. It’s a matter of hormones. I was sixteen and ripe for it, and Madjegau was tall and handsome and in the right place at the right time, and—well—”
“I suppose. I confess I can’t see the attraction.—Does it hurt, the first time, when they go inside you?”
“A little. It’s not important. You’re concentrating on other things, Keltryn. You’ll see. One of these days, not too far in the future—”
They were both giggling now, all animosities gone, sisters and friends.
“After Madjegau, were there many others? Before Dekkeret, I mean?”
“There were—some.” Fulkari glanced over doubtfully at Keltryn. “I don’t really think I ought to be talking about this.”
“You can tell me. I’m your sister. Why should we have secrets?—Come on. Who else, Fulkari?”
“Kandrigo. You remember him, I think. And Jengan Biru.”
“That’s three men, then! Plus Dekkeret.”
“I didn’t mention Velimir yet.”
“Four! Oh, you’re shameless, Fulkari! Of course I knew there had to be some. But four—!” She threw Fulkari a flashing inquisitorial look. “There aren’t any more, are there?”
“I can’t believe I’m telling you all this. But no, no others, Keltryn. Four lovers. That’s not really a lot, over the course of five years, you know.”
“And then Dekkeret.”
“And then Dekkeret, yes.”
Keltryn leaned toward Fulkari again, staring raptly into her eyes. “He’s the best one, isn’t he? Better than all the others put together. I know he is. I mean, I don’t know, but I think—I’m quite sure—”
“Enough, Keltryn. This is absolutely not something I’m going to discuss.”
“You don’t need to. I see the answer on your face. He’s wonderful: I’m certain of that. And now he’s Coronal. And you’re going to be queen of the world. Oh, Fulkari—Fulkari, I’m so happy for you! I can hardly tell you how much I—”
“Stop it, Keltryn.” Fulkari rose in one quick, brusque motion and began to gather up her clothing. Crisply, irritably, she said, “I think it’s about time for us to go.”
Keltryn saw that she had struck a nerve. Something was wrong, definitely wrong. But she couldn’t let matters drop here.
“You aren’t going to marry him, Fulkari?”
A chilly silence. Then: “No. I’m not.”
“He hasn’t asked? He has someone else in mind?”
“No. To both questions.”
“He’s asked, and you’ve turned him down?” said Keltryn incredulously. “Why, Fulkari? Why? You don’t love him? Is he too old for you? Do you have someone else in mind?—I can’t help it, Fulkari. I know all this is bothering you. But I just can’t understand how you can—”
To Keltryn’s amazement, Fulkari suddenly seemed close to tears. She tried to hide it, turning quickly away, standing with her face toward the wall and fumbling furiously with her clothes. But Keltryn could see the quivering movements of Fulkari’s shoulders, as of sobs barely being repressed.
In a dark, hollow voice Fulkari said, with her back still turned, “Keltryn, I do love Dekkeret. I do want to marry him. It’s Lord Dekkeret I don’t want to marry.”
Keltryn found that mystifying. “But—what—”
Fulkari turned to face her. “Do you have any idea what it involves, being the Coronal’s wife? The endless work, the responsibilities, the official dinners, the speeches? You ought to take a look at the schedule they post for the Lady Varaile. It’s a nightmare. I don’t want any part of it. Maybe I’m foolish, Keltryn, maybe I’m shallow and silly, but I can’t do anything about what I’m like. Marrying the Coronal seems to me very much like volunteering to go to prison.”
Keltryn stared. There was real torment in Fulkari’s voice, and Keltryn had no doubt of her pain. She felt a rush of compassion for her; but then, almost immediately after, came annoyance, anger, even outrage.
She had always thought of herself as the child, and Fulkari as the woman, but all of a sudden everything was reversed. At twenty-four, Fulkari seemed to think that she was still a girl. But did she believe she was going to be a girl all the rest of her life? Did she want nothing more for herself than going riding in the meadows, and flirting with handsome men, and sometimes making love with them?
Keltryn knew that it was best not to continue pressing her sister on any of this. But words came pouring out of her despite herself.
“Forgive me for saying this, Fulkari. But I’m amazed by what you’ve just told me. You’re in love with the most desirable and important man in the world, and he loves you and wants to marry you. But he’s about to become Coronal, and you say it’s just too much trouble to be the Coronal’s wife? Then I have to tell you you are a fool, Fulkari, the biggest fool that ever was. I’m sorry if that hurts you, but it’s true. A fool. And I’ll tell you something else: if you don’t want to marry Dekkeret, I will. If I can ever get him to notice me, that is. If I could put on ten or fifteen pounds, I’d look just like you, and I’ll learn to do whatever it is that men and women do with each other, and then—”
Coldly Fulkari said, “You’re talking nonsense, Keltryn.”
“Yes. I know I am.”
“Then stop it! Stop! Stop!” Fulkari was crying now. “Oh, Keltryn—Keltryn—”
“Fulkari—”
Keltryn rushed toward her. Held her tight. Felt her own tears coursing down her cheeks.
7
Jacomin Halefice said, “Th
e Lord Gaviral respectfully requests your presence at his palace, Count Mandralisca.”
Mandralisca looked up. “Is that how he said it, Jacomin? ‘Respectfully requests’?”
Halefice smiled for perhaps half a second. “The phrase was my own, your grace. I thought it sounded more courtly to say it so.”
“Yes. I dare say you did. It didn’t seem like Gaviral’s style at all.—Well, tell him I’ll be there in five minutes. No, let’s make it ten, I think.”
Let Gaviral respectfully wait. Mandralisca glanced down at the Barjazid helmet, lying before him on his desk in a little glittering heap. He had been playing with it all afternoon, donning it and sending his mind out into the world, testing the powers of the thing, trying to coax from it more knowledge of what it could do, and he wanted a little time to review what he had achieved.
He had so little control over it, so far. He could not direct it toward any particular region of the world, nor could he choose to make contact with any specific individual. Barjazid had assured him several times that they would eventually solve the directionality problem. Aiming the power of the helmet at any one person was a more difficult challenge, but Barjazid seemed to think that in time that could be achieved also. Certainly both things had been possible with earlier models, such as the one that Prestimion had used to strike down Barjazid’s brother Venghenar. This newer one had greater range and delicacy of effect—it was a rapier, not a saber, capable not simply of inflicting massive injury but of inducing light deflections in the minds it touched—but certain other qualities of precision had been lost.
Meanwhile, Barjazid said, it would be a good idea for Mandralisca to practice using the helmet daily, to accustom himself to its operation, to build up in himself the mental resilience needed to withstand the strains it imposed on the operator. And so he had. Day after day, he had visited citizens of Majipoor at random, sliding into their minds, tickling their souls with little unpleasant suggestions. It was interesting to see what kind of impact it was possible to have, even on a well guarded mind.
He had found that he was able to enter almost anyone he chose, though sleeping minds were much more vulnerable than waking ones. He could break down the defenses of the soul with a few deftly placed jabs, just as he had been able to do so splendidly in his baton-dueling days, when his agility of movement and his superior reflexes had brought him championship after championship in the tournaments, and, what was even more valuable, the great approbation of Dantirya Sambail. Using the helmet was very similar. In the tournaments, one did not wield the baton as a bludgeon; one baffled and bewildered one’s opponent with it, besieging him so with lightning-swift flicks of the pliant nightflower-wood stick that he left himself open for the climactic attack. Here, too, Mandralisca had discovered, it was best to undermine the victim’s own sense of purpose and security with a few light prods and nudges, and let him continue the process of destruction on his own. The gardener in Lord Havilbove’s park, the custodian of the bamboo palace at Ertsud Grand, the hapless calendar-keeper at that Hjort village, and all the rest of them—how easy it had been, really, and how pleasing!
Why, just today—
But the Lord Gaviral had respectfully requested his presence at his palace, Mandralisca reminded himself. One must not keep the Lords of Zimroel waiting unduly long, or they grow petulant. He slipped the helmet into the pouch at his hip where it resided whenever it was not in use, and set out up the path to Gaviral’s hilltop palace.
The palaces of the Five Lords appeared impressive from the outside, but their interiors reflected not only the haste with which the entire outpost had been constructed but the general tastelessness of the brothers. The architect—a Ghayrog from Dulorn, Hesmaan Thrax by name—had designed them to inspire awe in viewers approaching them from below: each of the five buildings was a huge dome of smooth and perfectly set tile, gray with a red undercast, rising to a great height and topped with the red crescent moon that was emblematic of the Sambailid clan. Within, though, they were bare echoing halls with rough unfinished walls and oddly mismatched furnishings badly placed.
Gaviral’s home was the best of the sorry lot. Its main hall was a vast soaring space that a great man like Confalume would have expanded easily into, and further enhanced with his own grandeur—he had never seemed out of place amidst the immensity of the throne-room he had built for himself at the Castle—but a petty creature like Gaviral was diminished by it. He seemed an irrelevance, an afterthought, in his own high hall.
As the eldest son of Dantirya Sambail’s brother Gaviundar, he had been entitled to first choice of the rich possessions that once had adorned the Procurator’s superb palace in Ni-moya. To him had fallen the most admirable of the statuary and hangings, the floor-coverings woven from the pelts of haiguses and steetmoy, the strange sculptures fashioned of animal bone that Dantirya Sambail had brought back from some expedition into the chilly Khyntor Marches of northern Zimroel. But all these treasures had suffered some abuse over the years, especially during the time following the death of Dantirya Sambail when mountainous drunken Gaviundar had inhabited the procuratorial palace. Many of the finest things were battered and chipped and stained, mountings had come unsprung, cracks had developed in delicate and irreplaceable objects. And now that they had descended to Gaviral’s custody they were negligently, almost randomly, displayed, strewn here and there about the echoing oversized chambers of the building like the neglected toys of some indifferent child.
Gaviral himself lounged in the midst of this shabby disheveled array in a broad thronelike chair that looked as though it had been designed for one of his four brothers, all of whom were much larger men than he was. A couple of his women crouched at his feet. All five of the Sambailids had furnished themselves with harems, in defiance of all custom and propriety. A flask of wine was clutched in his hand. Compared with his brothers, Gaviral was a model of sobriety and polite deportment; but he was a heavy drinker, nonetheless, like all his tribe.
Behind Gaviral’s left shoulder stood a second of the brothers. The Lord Gavdat, this one was, the plump, heavy-jowled, ineffably stupid one who liked to play with sorcery and prognostication. He was garbed today, absurdly, in the manner of a geomancer of the High City of Tidias, far away on Castle Mount: the tall brass helmet, the richly brocaded robe, the elaborately figured cloak. Mandralisca could not recall when he had last seen anything so ludicrous.
He made a formal gesture of obeisance. “Milord Gaviral. And milord Gavdat.”
Gaviral held out his flask. “Will you have some wine, Mandralisca?” After all this time they had still not succeeded in learning that he detested wine. But he declined politely, with thanks. There was no use trying to explain such things to these people. Gaviral himself drank deeply, and, with a courteousness of which Mandralisca would have thought him incapable, handed the flask to his shambling uncouth brother. Gavdat tipped his head so far back that Mandralisca marveled that his brass helmet did not fall off, drained the flask almost to the bottom, and indolently tossed it to the side, where it spilled its last dregs on what once had been a dazzlingly white steetmoy rug.
“Well, then,” Gaviral said finally. His quick little eyes flickered from side to side in that characteristic manner of his that was so like a small rodent’s. He brandished some papers that he held crumpled in one hand. “You’ve heard the news from the Labyrinth, Mandralisca?”
“That the Pontifex is seriously ill following a stroke, milord?”
“That the Pontifex is dead,” Gaviral said. “The first stroke was not fatal, but there was a second one. He died instantly, so say these reports, which have been some time in reaching us. Prestimion has already been installed as his successor.”
“And Dekkeret as the new Coronal?”
“His coronation will soon take place,” said Gavdat, intoning the words as though he were transmitting messages from some invisible spirit. “I have cast his auspices. He will have a short and unhappy reign.”
Mandralisca w
aited. These remarks did not seem to call for comment.
“Perhaps,” said the Lord Gaviral, running his fingers through his thinning reddish hair, “this would be an auspicious moment for us to proclaim the independence of Zimroel under our rule. The formidable Confalume gone from the scene, Prestimion preoccupied with establishing his administration at the Labyrinth, an untried new man taking command at the Castle—what do you say, Mandralisca? We pack up and return to Ni-moya, and let it be known that the western continent has lived long enough under the thumb of Alhanroel, eh? We present them with an accomplished fact, poof! and defy them to object.”
Before Mandralisca could reply there came a loud clattering and crashing in the outside hall, and some hoarse shouts. Mandralisca assumed that these noises were harbingers of the arrival of the blustering bestial Lord Gavinius, but to his mild surprise the newcomer was bulky thickset Gavahaud, he who fancied himself a paragon of elegance and grace. The interruption was a welcome one: it gave him a moment to find the most diplomatic way of framing his response. Gavahaud came in muttering about encountering an unexpected obstacle in the sculpture-hall outside. Then, seeing Mandralisca, he glanced toward Gaviral and said, “Well? Does he agree?”
No question that they were seething with the yearning to unleash their war against Prestimion and Dekkeret. They wanted only for him to pat them on their heads and praise them for their high ambitions and warlike souls.
All three brothers had their attention focused intently on him now: gimlet-eyed Gaviral, bloodshot Gavahaud, moist-eyed foolish Gavdat. It was almost poignant, Mandralisca thought, how dependent they were on him, how terribly eager they were to have him confirm whatever pitiful shreds of strategy they had contrived to work out for themselves.
He said, “If you mean, milord, do I agree that this is the proper time to announce ourselves independent of the imperial government, my answer is that I do not believe it is.”
Each of the three reacted in his own way to Mandralisca’s calm declaration. Mandralisca observed all three reactions in a single glance, and found them instructive.
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