Fost winced. It wasn't his fault. Still, he had been raised on tales of the opulence of life in the Imperial court. It had been something of a shock when they were ushered into Teom's presence in the private audience chamber and found it so austere. Likewise, Fost wondered at finding Teom attended only by his sister-wife and the dwarf advisor. Where were the coveys of courtiers said to follow him everywhere, panting with eagerness to obey his every whim? He admitted his puzzlement to Erimenes.
'But you did see nude dancing girls, Erimenes,' he pointed out. 'This morning on the pier. They came out to greet Magister Banshau along with the cherubs and savants and that tinny marching band, remember?' 'But they were too far away to see anything.'
As they came back within earshot, Teom was pointing with pride at a shaggy mountain with a tail at both ends and two huge yellow tusks curving from the vicinity of the thicker tail.
'A Jorean mammoth, from Amsi Province in the south. They tame the beasts as dray-animals, I'm told, as we do hornbulls.' He indicated a block of ice melting in the corner behind the listless, hairy giant. 'It's fortunate we have an adequate ice house in the Palace. Otherwise, the poor beast would swelter to death in this frightful heat.' He turned to nod at Fost, his smile mocking.
'Perhaps I had motives beyond secrecy in receiving you so surreptitiously and informally, friend Longstrider. Perhaps I felt a yearning to meet with people who had been to strange places and done wonderful things, and talk with them as people – not as mannikins decked with plumes and ribbons and walled off from all true contact by layer after layer of protocol. And without a flock of gaudy, useless songbirds fluttering about cooing in awe at my every utterance. Their songs are pretty, I confess, but they are also empty.' He reached out and touched Fost fleetingly on the shoulder with his long, soft, pallid fingers. 'Perhaps one day I should like to sit down and hear you tell me about life in my city's streets.' His tone was serious and his eyes were touched with bleakness. Fost almost missed his next words. 'That might be the most alien environment of all, to me.'
Then he laughed and turned away, his robe swirling about his legs. 'And perhaps a man as well-travelled as you should consider how keen must be the hearing of an Emperor to survive Palace intrigues long enough to keep the throne.'
Fost hardly thought of himself as a citizen of Medurim any more. But still… the Emperor had touched him and named him friend. In a way, that was as strange and wonderful as anything befalling him. They came to the end of the rows of enclosure.
'Here's a sentimental favorite of mine,'Teom said. It was a seashore enclosure, a rocky beach and a pool dark with seaweed. Resting with half its bulk in the water was a mottled brown sea toad as big as Magister Banshau and covered with warts. 'It's three hundred years old,' Teom said. 'It sings with a beautiful, high soprano when the moons are full. But mostly I keep it because it reminds me of my dear, departed mother, the Dowager Empress.' He snuffled and wiped his eye. Fost stared. The thing did look like the late Dowager.
"What do you think of my menagerie?' Teom asked. He made a slight hand gesture and a balding servant appeared from nowhere bearing iced goblets and a flask of wine. Erimenes nodded. This was more like it, although the servitor didn't fit his conception of what a servitor should be. Too old, too male.
Fost sipped the cool wine. It was sweetened to the verge of cloying, but refreshing nonetheless.
'It's beautiful, Your Supremacy,' Moriana said. 'But am I correct in assuming it's not the Project you spoke of?'
'Indeed you are, Princess.' Teom had taken no wine himself. 'When you've refreshed yourselves, I will show you the great work whose culmination Magister Banshau has brought about.' He closed the parasol and handed it to the servant.
Moriana set her empty goblet back on the tray held by the immobile servant, saying, 'I'm ready.'
Teom led them through a door in the northwest corner of the Palace. Inside was cool and dim. They passed down a narrow corridor toward a shine of lamplight and a low murmur of conversation.
A stentorian whoop of joy echoed around a large chamber as they entered. Magister Banshau stood before them, his garish garments mercifully hidden under a white smock, holding his hands above his head and performing a dancing bear two-step of glee. He saw them and uttered another joyous bellow.
'Your Imperiousness! I have suceeded! I, the Magister Zolscher Banshau, now assume my undoubted rightful place among the greatest of Wirixer mages!' And he seized Teom by the arm and waltzed him around the room.
A few old men in robes who sat crosslegged in a semi-circle on the floor looked up reprovingly at the commotion, then went back to reading in droning monotones. Fost spared them barely a glance; even the bizarre spectacle of the Emperor of High Medurim practically swept off his feet by a balloon-shaped wizard couldn't compete for his attention with the beast occupying the center of the room.
It was huge, the size of the Jorean mammoth and more, sporting a featureless hump, corpse-white and touched with blue-gray near its base. It lay in a pool of horribly bubbling brown, viscous liquids. The wrinkled, robed men were arranged around the pit, and they appeared to be reading to it.
'It looks,' Erimenes said, tapping his nose judiciously, 'like an enormous mushroom cap.'
'You're right, my excellent Athalar friend!' Banshau released the Emperor and started to grab the genie. He only succeeded in dispersing Erimenes's thin substance. As Erimenes coalesced in a blue whirlwind, the mage grabbed Fost and kissed him wetly on both cheeks. His moustache was redolent of wine and salt fish. 'It is a fungus. But a fungus such as the world has never seen!'
How a new breed of fungus merited such excitement escaped Fost. 'Where is – where is it?' Teom almost danced with excitement.
'There.' Banshau pointed to a door opposite the one through which they'd entered. In a single bound Teom was pulling it open and tumbling inside like a child opening his Equinox presents. Fost followed, careful not to jostle the imperial personage while craning his neck from side to side to see.
The cubicle was bare of furnishings. A small, round man sat crosslegged on the stone floor. His skin was very pale. At the sound of the door, he raised his head. His cheeks swelled in an infectious smile. Colorless eyes surrounded by laugh-lines glowed. 'Your Radiance,' he said, bowing.
'O Oracle!' cried Teom. He fell to his knees. 'This is the greatest moment of my life! My name shall live forever for this!' 'And mine,' added Banshau.
'Oracle?' Erimenes's brow creased. 'I remember the Magister saying something about an Oracle aboard the ship. Who is this Oracle, anyway?'
'I am, honored sir,' said the pale, round man. A pudgy hand pointed past the kneeling Emperor and Fost to the swollen fungus mound. 'And that is the Oracle, as well.' His merry laughter peeled like a bell.
'Many years ago,' the Emperor said around a mouthful of food, 'a certain Wirixer mage was on an expedition to the Isles of the Sun. He gathered specimens himself, since several of his assistants had been killed and eaten as a result of some slight unpleasantness with the Golden Barbarians.' He paused to wet his throat from a goblet of iced water. 'He was wading in a tidepool, whistling to himself. He lost his footing and stopped whistling while he caught his balance – only to hear the last few bars of his tune whistled back at him from nearby.
'On investigating, he found the sound had come from a fist-sized growth at the edge of the pool. A small amphibious predator lived nearby; the fungus imitated the cries of various seabirds and lured them into the creature's reach. In turn, its droppings and the remnants of its meals nourished the fungus. Remarkable symbiotic development.' Temalla made a face at the mention of droppings. She picked a leg of roast fowl from the silver platter and began to tear at it with small, neat teeth, gazing at Fost as if she'd decided to have him for the next course.