At a quick glance it seemed to Akbalik that the Lady Varaile was with child. Her manner of dress indicated that. She had that radiant maternal look already as well. That was interesting, the thought of Prestimion as a father so soon after taking on the tasks of the crown. And in these troubled times, too. But he should have expected it. This was a new Prestimion, deepened by responsibility, plainly eager for greater stability in his life, continuity, the ripeness that was maturity.
The Lady Therissa looked magnificent: serene, graceful, steady of soul. All the things that Akbalik himself had been before his ill-fated expedition into the depths of the Stoienzar. He felt better simply from being this near to her.
“Is that smoke I smell?” Prestimion asked.
“A building’s on fire up the street a little way. There’s been a lot of that lately.” Akbalik lowered his voice. “Crazy people carrying bales of straw up to rooftops and setting fire to them. A very popular pastime, suddenly. The mayor will be able to give you more information.”
The mayor, a portly red-faced man related in some remote way to Duke Oljebbin and every bit as self-important, was already asserting his place anyway, coming forward to loom over Prestimion’s slight figure in a fashion that the Coronal was highly unlikely to enjoy. But protocol was protocol, and this was Bannikap’s moment. Akbalik deferred to him. He told Prestimion, who was staring pensively at that black curl of smoke spreading across the sky, that he would attend him later at his suite at the Crystal Pavilion, and made his limping exit.
A wall of continuous windows two hundred feet long gave the Crystal Pavilion its name. It was a relatively young building, put up by Duke Oljebbin during Prankipin’s time as Coronal, that stood in a magnificently solitary position in central Stoien atop a colossal pedestal of whitewashed brick. From Lord Prestimion’s splendid three-level suite atop the pavilion the view took in the entire city, which unfortunately made it all too easy today to see the pillars of smoke arising from the nine or ten fires that were burning in the downtown area.
“This happens every day, these fires?” Prestimion asked.
Akbalik and the Coronal sat before platters of small cubes of smoked sea-dragon meat. Lady Varaile, weary after the hasty and sometimes turbulent voyage, had retreated to her bedchamber. The Lady Therissa was in a suite four levels down from Prestimion’s, resting also. Akbalik had no idea where Dekkeret and the Su-Suheris had gone.
“More or less. It’s a little unusual to have this many going at once.”
“The madness, is it?”
“The madness, yes. This is the dry season: there’s a lot of fuel sitting around. Those pretty vines that flower all summer long turn to immense mounds of straw. As I told you, the crazies gather up bundles of it and go up on rooftops to set it afire. I don’t know why. I suppose there are more fires today than usual because they heard the Coronal and the Lady were coming, and that excited them.”
“Bannikap tried to tell me that the damage is generally pretty minimal.”
“Generally it is. Not always. There’s been a big effort, the past two weeks, to demolish and clear away the really seriously ruined buildings, so you won’t have to look at them while you’re here. Wherever you see a little park about big enough to have held a single building, with freshly planted flowering shrubs, you’re looking at a place where they had a bad fire.—May I have more wine, my lord?”
“Yes, of course.” Prestimion pushed the flask across. “Tell me what you did to your leg.”
“We should discuss Dantirya Sambail, sir.”
“We will. What about the leg?”
“I hurt it while I was out hunting for Dantirya Sambail. The Procurator’s been moving around very freely within that hell-hole where he’s been making camp, pulling up stakes every few days, going up and down through the jungle as it pleases him. He’s become very good, lately, at covering his tracks. We’re never quite sure where he is on any given day. Using a magus, I suppose, to cast a cloud of unknowingingness all around himself. Last month I took a few hundred men and went looking for him, just a reconnaissance mission, to make sure he wasn’t going to slip out of our reach altogether. I saw the place where he had been. But he had moved along, a day or two before.”
“He’s definitely aware that we’re on to him?”
“He must be, by now. How could he not? And if we lose him in there for more than a day or two at a time, finding him again will be the old needle in a haystack problem. He’s been amazingly tricky about staying beyond our reach. Anyway, about the leg—”
“The leg, yes.”
“The scouts said that they thought the Procurator’s current location was about two hundred miles inland from the town of Karasat, which is on the southern coast between Maximin and Gunduba, if those names mean anything to you. So I sailed over from Stoien to have a look. You know, my lord, people speak of the Suvrael desert as being the most unpleasant place in the world, with the Valmambra a distant second. But no, no, we’ve got the prize-winner right here in lower Alhanroel. I’ve never been to Suvrael, or the Valmambra either, but I tell you, sir, they can’t possibly be a patch on the southern Stoienzar for sheer nastiness. It’s full of creatures that must have migrated over from Suvrael looking for an even more horrible place to live. I know. I had an encounter with one.”
“Something bit you, you mean?”
“A swamp-crab, yes. Not one of the big ones—you should see the size of those monsters, my lord—” Akbalik spread his arms in a broad gesture. “No, it was a little one, a mere baby, lying in wait, clipped me with its nipper, snap, just like that. The worst pain I ever hope to feel. Some kind of acid venom, they say, in the bite. Leg swelled up five times normal size. It’s not so bad now, I think.”
Prestimion, frowning, leaned forward for a better look. “What are you doing for it?”
“I have a Vroon secretary, name of Kestivaunt, very capable. He’s looking after it. Puts medicine on it, does a little Vroonish hocus-pocus also—if the spells don’t cure it, the herbal ointment ought to.” A fresh spasm of blazing pain traveled up Akbalik’s side. He clenched his teeth and turned away, determined not to let Prestimion see how much anguish he was in. A change of subject seemed the best idea.—"My lord, tell me what Dekkeret was doing with you on the Isle, if you will. I would have assumed that he’d have finished up his business in Suvrael—you know, his expiation, his redemption, after that affair in the Khyntor Marches—and returned to the Castle a long time ago.”
“He did return,” said Prestimion. “Late last summer, it was. Bringing someone with him who he had had a little run-in with in Suvrael. Do you remember a certain Venghenar Barjazid, Akbalik?”
“Knavish-looking little fellow who used to do odd jobs for Duke Svor?”
“The very same. When I sent that troublesome Vroon Thalnap Zelifor into exile in Suvrael, I picked this Barjazid to go with him and make sure he got there. One of the infinite number of mistakes that I’ve made, Akbalik, since I took it into my head that I was qualified to be Coronal.”
Akbalik listened in growing concern as Prestimion sketched the tale for him: Barjazid doing away with the Vroon and appropriating his mind-controlling devices for his own purposes; the episodes of predatory experimentation on hapless travelers with those devices in Suvrael’s Desert of Stolen Dreams; then Dekkeret’s own encounter with Barjazid in that desert, his capture of Barjazid, his bringing of Barjazid and his machines to the Castle.
“He lost no time asking for an audience,” Prestimion said. “I didn’t happen to be at the Castle that day, so he met with Varaile, and very carefully explained the power of these devices, and the danger in them, to her. When I returned she tried to tell me the story, but I confess I paid very little attention. One more black mark on my record, Akbalik. Well, now Barjazid has slipped out of the Castle somehow and made his way down to the Stoienzar to put his machines to work on behalf of Dantirya Sambail. Which is what Dekkeret came running out to the Isle to tell me, and why I’ve come over to Stoien so quickly myself. If Barjazid and Dantirya Sambail manage to join forces—”