It was the left head of the Su-Suheris that had spoken before. Now the other head said calmly, “I have a certain gift of second sight. The Bailemoona reports have the ring of truth to me, and so I choose to give them credence. You are not obligated to agree.”
Abrigant began to make some grumbling reply; but Navigorn said, with a sharp note of testiness in his voice, “May I continue?” He traced a line with his hand over the illuminated places on the map. “There have been additional sightings, some of them more trustworthy than others—here, here, here, and here. You’ll note that the general direction is southerly. That’s the only sensible direction for him to go in anyway, because he’s got nothing to his north or west except the desert that surrounds the Labyrinth, not a useful choice, and he wouldn’t have anything to gain by going back into the east-country. But there’s a clear line of march here that’s taking him toward the southern coast.”
“What cities are those?” Abrigant asked, indicating the red dots strung like glowing beads along the lines of green that stretched southward across the land.
“Ketheron up here,” said Navigorn. “Then Arvyanda. This is Kajith Kabulon, where the rain never ceases falling. Once he makes his way through its jungles, he emerges on the southern coast, where he can get a ship heading toward Zimroel in any one of a hundred ports.”
“Which are the main ones?” Gialaurys asked.
“Due south of the rain-forest country,” Navigorn said, “we have Sippulgar, first. Continuing on westward along the coast from there, he would come to Maximin, Karasat, Gun-duba, Slail, and Porto Gambieris—this, this, this, this, and this.” He spoke in a brusque, commanding tone. He had prepared himself well for this meeting: a way of atoning, perhaps, for his negligence in allowing Dantirya Sambail to slip free in the first place. “Aside from Sippulgar, none of these has direct shipping connections with Zimroel, but in any of them, or their neighbors farther along the north shore of the Stoienzar peninsula, he could book a passage on a coasting vessel that would carry him up to Stoien city, to Treymone, even to Alaisor. In any of those he’d be able to arrange for the voyage across to Piliplok, and from there upriver to Ni-moya.”
“No, not so easily,” said Gialaurys. “You may recall that I’ve placed all ports from Stoien to Alaisor under close surveillance. There’s no way that anyone as unusual-looking as he is could slip past even the dullest-witted customs official. We’ll extend the blockade eastward now as far as Sippulgar. Farther, even, if you want me to, Prestimion.”
Prestimion, studying the map with care, made no immediate reply. “Yes,” he said, after a good deal of time had gone by. “I also think that we’d do well to set up military patrols along a line beginning just north of Bailemoona and running westward as far as Stoien city.”
“That is to say, along the route of the klorbigan fence,” said Septach Melayn, and began to laugh. “How very appropriate. For that’s what he is, isn’t he? Ugly as a klorbi-gan, and five times as dangerous!”
Prestimion and Abrigant began to laugh also. Gialaurys, looking vexed, said, “I pray you, what are you talking about here?”
“Klorbigans,” said Prestimion, still chuckling, “are fat, lazy, clumsy burrowing animals of south-central Alhanroel with great pink noses and enormous hairy feet. They live on bark and tree roots, and in their native district they eat only certain wild species that are of no use to anyone but themselves. About a thousand years ago, though, they began migrating north into the areas where the farmers grow stajja and glein, and they discovered that they liked the taste of stajja tubers every bit as much as we do. Suddenly there were half a million klorbigans digging up the stajja crop all over the middle of Alhanroel. The farmers couldn’t kill the beasts fast enough. Whoever was Coronal at that time finally hit on the idea of a special kind of fence that runs right along the middle of the continent. It’s just a couple of feet high, so any animal that’s even slightly less sluggish than a klorbigan can step right over it, but it goes down six or seven feet underground, which apparently keeps them from burrowing beneath it.”
“Lord Kybris, it was, who built it,” Septach Melayn said.
“Kybris, yes,” said Prestimion. “Well, we’ll build a klorbigan fence of our own, a patrol line without any breaks in it, so that if Dantirya Sambail decides to swing around once again and go north, he’ll be picked up in—” He paused in mid-sentence. “Navigorn? Navigorn, what’s the matter?”
Everyone stared. Big black-bearded Navigorn had turned away suddenly from his map and was doubled into a crouch, head bowed and arms clutching his middle, as if in some terrible racking spasm of pain. After a moment he raised his head, and Prestimion saw that Navigorn’s features were contorted into a horrifying grimace. Appalled, Prestimion signaled for Gialaurys and Septach Melayn, who were closest to him, to go to his aid. But Maundigand-Klimd acted first: the Su-Suheris lifted one hand and inclined his two heads toward each other, and something invisible passed between him and Navigorn, and within a moment the entire strange episode appeared to have ended. Navigorn was standing upright as though nothing at all had occurred, blinking the way one might after having dropped into an unexpected doze. His face was calm.—"Did you say something, Prestimion?”
“A very singular expression came over you, and I asked you what the matter was. It seemed you were having a seizure of some sort.”
“I was? A seizure?” Navigorn looked bewildered. “But I have no recollection of any such thing.” Then he brightened. “Ah! Then it must have happened again, without my knowing it!”
“Then this is something frequent with you?” asked Septach Melayn.
“It has occurred more than once,” said Navigorn, looking a little sheepish now. Plainly he was abashed to be making this admission of weakness. But he plunged forward even so. “Along with great headaches, yes, that come and go suddenly, so that I think my skull will split open. And terrible dreams, very often. I have never had dreams of such a sort before.”
“Will you tell us of them?” asked Prestimion gently.
It was a delicate thing, asking someone—a nobleman, a warrior at that—to reveal his dreams in such a group. But Navigorn said unhesitatingly, “I am on a battlefield, again and again, a great muddy field where men are dying on all sides and streams of blood run underfoot. Who among us has ever fought a pitched battle, my lord? Who ever will, on this peaceful world? But I am there, armed and armored, laying about me with my sword, killing with every stroke. I kill strangers and I kill friends too, my lord.”
“You kill me, perhaps? Septach Melayn?”
“No, not you. I don’t know who they are who fall to my sword. They are not people whose faces I can identify when I awaken and think back upon my dream. But as I lie dreaming I know that I am killing dear friends, and it sickens me, my lord. It sickens me.” Navigorn shivered, though the room was very warm. “I tell you, lordship, this dream comes to me over and over, sometimes three nights running, so that by now I fear closing my eyes at all.”
“How long has this been going on?” Prestimion asked.
Navigorn said, shrugging, “Days? Weeks? It’s not something I can easily reckon up.—May I be excused for a few minutes?”
Prestimion nodded. Flushed now and glossy with sweat, Navigorn went from the room. Prestimion said quietly to Septach Melayn, “Did you hear? A battle in which he kills his friends. This is one more thing for which I bear the guilt.”
“My lord, what guilt there is in this is Korsibar’s,” said Septach Melayn.