Prestimion watched all this with interest. But the miners of Zeberged, though they presented him with wondrous slabs of purest topaz, could give him no information about Dantirya Sambail.
Beyond Zeberged the sky grew dark with clouds, hanging heavy in the sky like thick, opalescent gauze. They were entering rainy Kajith Kabulon, where a wedge-shaped mountain formation perpetually caught the fogs that came off the southern seas and transformed them into rain. Indeed it was not long before they reached the zone of precipitation, and once they did they saw no more sunlight for days. The rain came in a steady drumbeat. It was essentially continuous, interrupted only by occasional scant hours of surcease.
The jungles of Kajith Kabulon were green, green, green. Trees and shrubs in exuberant prodigality rose everywhere toward the sky, their trunks striped brilliantly with strands of red and yellow fungi that provided the only splashes of vivid color to be seen and their crowns tied together by an impenetrable tangle of lianas and epiphytes that formed a virtually solid canopy, against which the rain constantly splashed, dripping through to the ground below. The spongy soil was covered by a dense carpet of furry green moss, broken here and there by narrow streamlets and numerous small pools, all of which reflected and refracted the dim greenish light in such complex ways that it often was impossible to tell whether that light came from overhead or rose in spontaneous generation from the forest floor.
There was animal life everywhere here too, bewildering in its abundance. Voracious long-legged bugs; clouds of fleas; droning white wasps with black-striped wings. Blue spiders that hung groundward in lengthy chains from towering trees. Flies with immense ruby eyes. Yellow-spotted scarlet lizards. Flat-headed booming toads. Mysterious small things that lurked in the crannies of rocks without revealing any more of themselves than hairy probing talons. And, now and again, some heavy shaggy beast that never came anywhere near the travelers, but could be seen at a great distance, snorting and snuffling through the jungle as it overturned clods of moss with its fork-like trunk to seek whatever might dwell beneath. In the green darkness, things took on strange borrowed forms: slender chameleons looked like gray twigs, twigs like chameleons, snakes pretended to be vines, certain vines had the unmistakable look of serpents. Rotting logs lying in the streams were easily enough taken for lurking predatory gurnibongs; but once, as Gialaurys knelt by the water’s edge to splash his face in the morning, he saw what he was sure was only a log that was lying in the stream a few feet from him rise, grunting, on four stubby legs and move slowly away, snapping its long toothy snout in displeasure at having been disturbed.
Prince Thaszthasz, a supple, olive-skinned man of unknowable age who had governed in Kajith Kabulon as far back as Prestimion could remember, took the unheralded arrival of the Coronal in his province as calmly as he seemed to take everything else. He provided a lavish feast for Prestimion at his wickerwork palace at the heart of the jungle, an open and airy structure that he said was patterned after a style favored by the Metamorphs of Ilirivoyne, far off on the other continent. “I build a new one every year,” Thaszthasz explained. “It saves on housekeeping costs.” They dined on the sweet fruits and smoked meats of the rainforest, a procession of flavors wholly unfamiliar to the men from Castle Mount, but the wine, at least, was of the north, a touch of home at last. There were musicians; there were jugglers; three sinuous girls wearing next to nothing performed an intricate, provocative dance. Prestimion and the prince discussed the pleasures of the Coronation festivals, the vigorous health of the Pontifex as Prestimion had lately observed it, and the fascinations of the jungle about them, which Thaszthasz unsurprisingly thought the most beautiful district in all of Majipoor.
Gradually, as the night wore on, the talk came around to more serious matters. Prestimion began gradually to move toward the topic of Dantirya Sambail; but before he had quite managed to be specific about his reasons for coming south, Prince Thaszthasz deftly interjected that he had a grave problem on his hands himself, which was the growing incidence of inexplicable insanity among the people of his province.
“We are in general very well balanced folk here, you know, my lord. The unvarying mildness and warmth of our climate, the beauty and tranquility of our surroundings, the steady music of the rain—you have no idea, your lordship, how beneficial all of that is for the soul.”
“This is true. I have no idea of it indeed,” said Prestimion.
“But now—in the past six months, or eight, perhaps—quite suddenly, there has been a change. We see the most solid citizens suddenly rising up and going off by themselves, entirely unprepared, into the forest. Leaving the main roads, you understand, which is a perilous thing, for the forest is huge—you would call it a jungle, I suppose—and it can be unkind to those who flout its requirements. There have been eleven hundred such disappearances so far. Only a handful of those who have gone have returned. Why did they go? What were they seeking? They are unable to tell us.”
“How strange,” said Prestimion uncomfortably.
“Then, too, we’ve had a great many unusual episodes of irrational behavior, even violence, in the city itself—actual fatalities, even—” Thaszthasz shook his head. A look of pain appeared on his smooth, normally serene face. “It goes beyond my understanding, my lord. There have been no changes here that might have brought about such upheavals. I confess I find it distasteful and disturbing.—Tell me, lordship, have you heard similar reports from other districts?”
“From some, yes,” said Prestimion, who, distracted by the strange new scenery all about him, had managed to put this entire issue out of mind since leaving the Labyrinth. It was unpleasant to have to confront it once again. “I agree: the situation is troublesome. We are conducting investigations.”
“Ah. And no doubt will have important conclusions to share with us shortly.—Can it be some kind of sorcery, do you think, that has caused all this, my lord? That is my theory, and a sound one, I think. What else could have robbed so many people of their reason all at once, if not a great witchcraft that some dark force has cast across the land?”
“We are giving it our closest attention,” said Prestimion, this time putting enough sharpness into his tone so that Thaszthasz, long experienced in the ways of power, could see that the Coronal wished to end the discussion. “Let me turn to another matter, now, Prince Thaszthasz, which is in fact the purpose for which I have ventured into your lovely forest—”
11
“He certainly was quite cool about it,” said Septach Melayn in some dudgeon, as they were making their way out the southern end of the rain-forest country. “Oh, yes, of course, the celebrated Procurator,” he said, in devastating high-pitched mimicry of Prince Thaszthasz’s bland, unperturbable style of speech. “ ‘What a remarkable person he is! And what a season this has been for unexpected visits by the greatest citizens of the realm!’ Hadn’t he heard a thing about the coastal blockade? Or the interdiction line that we’ve run from Bailemoona to Stoien?”