“By some other member of the Procurator’s retinue, smuggling it into the tunnels,” cried Septach Melayn. “Getting it in, perhaps, the same way Mandralisca got himself and his master out. A conspiracy! The Ni-moya folk found out where Dantirya Sambail was, and contrived by magical arts to get him free!”
“This is shameful,” Teotas said, glowering again at Navigorn. “If prisoners can be freed so casually from the tunnels by wizardry, why was no sort of counterspell put on the place to protect against that very thing?”
“Spells—counterspells—there would be no end of that,” Prestimion said irritably. “We couldn’t have guarded against every eventuality, Teotas.” He looked toward the Su-Suheris. “I asked you to strip the Procurator’s mind of certain special memories, Maundigand-Klimd. And I instructed you, also, to remove from it every possibility of acting on evil impulses. Were those things done?”
“Only the initial and very preliminary phase, the removal of those certain memories. The greater work, the suppression of the evil that’s so deeply rooted in his character, must be executed with care, my lord, if the man’s not to be reduced to a babbling idiot.”
“Small loss that would have been,” said Gialaurys.—"Well, then: a pretty mess, Dantirya Sambail loose with most or all of his foulness still intact within him, and on his way to Zimroel to raise an army. But we’ll handle it. We’ll get messengers out, top speed, west and south. I’ll slap a surveillance order on all ports along both those coasts. Stoien, Treymone, Alaisor—we’ll cut him off from home, and track him down, and bring him back here in chains. It’s not as though the Procurator’s a difficult man to recognize.”
“That he is not,” said Abrigant, speaking for the first time. “But he may not have gone west or south, though.”
“What?” said Gialaurys and Septach Melayn in the same instant.
Abrigant unfolded a despatch. “Akbalik brought this to me five minutes before I entered this meeting,” he said. “According to what I see here, someone looking very much like the Procurator of Ni-moya was sighted these two days past in Vrambikat province. I point out that Vrambikat lies due east of Castle Mount.”
“East,” said Gialaurys in a baffled tone. “What good’s his going east? This must be wrong. You can’t get to Zimroel from here by traveling east!”
“You can if you get yourself to the shore of the Great Sea and sail clear across to the other side,” said Septach Melayn with a sly smile.
Gialaurys grunted in annoyance. “Nobody in all of history has ever sailed across the Great Sea. What makes you think Dantirya Sambail would attempt such an impossible project now?”
“Let’s hope he has,” said Abrigant, grinning. “He’ll never be seen again!”
A bright cascade of laughter came from Septach Melayn. “Or if by some miracle he does get all the way over to Zimroel after a year or two at sea,” he said, “it’ll take him half a year more just to make the trip from Pidruid or Narabal, or wherever he comes ashore, to his home in Ni-moya. Where we’ll have troops waiting to arrest him.”
Prestimion alone failed to register amusement. “The thought of the Procurator’s making such a voyage at all is completely imbecilic,” he said. “It can’t be done.”
“There is an old tale,” said Maundigand-Klimd, “that the thing was attempted in the time of Lord Arioc, a vessel setting out from the port of Til-omon and sailing westward in the Great Sea, but it became tangled in floating dragon-grass, and then miscarried its direction altogether, and wandered at sea for five years, or, some say, eleven, before finally finding its way back to the port from which it had—”
“All well and good,” said Prestimion sharply, “but I refuse to believe that Dantirya Sambail has any such enterprise in mind. If he really has set out eastward, it’s no doubt some sort of trick. Eastern Alhanroel’s a remote, isolated place. He can disappear into it and easily avoid capture, and eventually he could change course entirely and head up north to Bandar Delem or Vythiskiorn and find a Zimroel-bound ship there. Or swing around abruptly to the south, and go out by way of the tropics. The one idea I don’t give any credit to at all is that he’s actually planning to make his way home by way of a sea that nobody has ever been able to navigate.”
“What are you going to do, then?” asked Septach Melayn.
“Send a military force toward Vrambikat and try to track him down before he vanishes altogether.” Prestimion pointed toward Gialaurys. “Under your command, Gialaurys,” he said. “Yours and Abrigant’s, jointly. I want you on the road to Vrambikat within fifty hours.” He hesitated a moment and added, gesturing to the Su-Suheris, “You’ll go with them, Maundigand-Klimd. And I want a Vroon, also. Vroons are wondrous good at magicking up the right direction for travel. Have you a Vroon among your wizardly acquaintances, Maundigand-Klimd, who could accompany you?”
“There is one I know, named Galielber Dorn. He has the skills we would need.”
“And where’s he to be found?”
“High Morpin, my lord. He has a mind-reading concession there, at the park of the mirror-slides.”
“That’s not far. Get word to him right away that he’s to present himself at the Castle by tomorrow afternoon. Offer him whatever fee he thinks he needs for serving as our guide.”
The thought came to Prestimion then of what it would be like to go into the east-country, where he had never been, where hardly anyone ever went. The excitement of venturing into territory so little known as this region of Alhanroel throbbed suddenly within him; and he felt himself overcome once more by that powerful wanderlust, that irresistible desire to leave the Castle’s multitude of echoing rooms behind him and set forth into the infinite wonder that was Majipoor, that had come to be for him the one consolation for the absence of his true consort.
He would not let them go into those strange lands yonder without him.
Could not.
And if he needed to provide a plausible pretext for allowing himself once more to be drawn from the Castle, why, this search for Dantirya Sambail would serve the purpose well enough, he told himself.
And so he said, flashing a sudden smile at them after another pause: “Do you know, Septach Melayn, I think I’ll want you to serve as regent again. Because I mean to be part of this expedition also.”
2
He knew almost at once that he had made the right choice. This was uncommonly beautiful country, out here east of the Mount. Prestimion was not the only member of the party to whom this was a new land. None of them had ever gone into the east-country, except perhaps the little Vroon, Galielber Dorn, who was their guide. It was not clear whether the Vroon had actually traveled in these parts before, but certainly he behaved as if he had, calling out the landmarks to them one after another with the confident air of one who has been here many times. But that was a special skill of Vroons, Prestimion knew: their near-infallible sense of direction, their all-knowing awareness of the relationship of places. It was as though they came into the world with detailed maps of every region of the universe already in place behind their great golden eyes. Yet in fact Galielber Dorn might be just as much a stranger to the east-country as they were themselves.
The mighty pedestal of Castle Mount filled the sky behind them. Just ahead lay the misty valley of Vrambikat; and beyond that was the unknown. Already they were able to spy strangenesses and wonders in the distance, for the land was still sloping away from the Mount, and their view extended for many miles to north and south and east.
“That patch of red, Galielber Dorn,” said Abrigant, pointing off to the southeast, where there was a startling dot of bright color against the horizon. “What’s that? A place that’s rich in iron ore, is it? For iron has that reddish hue.”