“To the west, my lord, is the province of Stoien, developing into the Stoienzar Peninsula. We find just a few widely spaced ports along the southern Stoien coast, because the great heat, the insects, the impenetrable saw-palm jungles, have discouraged settlement. In a span of close to three thousand miles we have only the towns of Maximin, Karasat, Gunduba, Slail, and Porto Gambieris, none of them of any consequence. If the Procurator had emerged from Kajith Kabulon at any of those and attempted to buy passage to some port farther west, we would certainly have had word of it; but no one resembling Dantirya Sambail has been seen in any of them.”
“What if he didn’t come as far overland as the southern coast, though?” Septach Melayn wanted to know. “What if he simply turned in a westerly direction farther up, and headed for one of the ports on the northern side of the peninsula? Would that have been possible?”
“Possible, yes. Difficult, but possible.” The Prefect traced a line across the map with the tip of one long, bony finger. “Here is Kajith Kabulon. The only good road that comes out of the rain-forest is the one going due south, which brought you here. But there are some country roads, badly maintained and not easy to use, that might have more appeal for a man trying to escape justice. This one, for instance, which leaves Kajith Kabulon at its southwest corner and passes through north-central Aruachosia heading west toward the peninsula. If he managed things successfully, the Procurator would have been able to reach any one of a dozen ports on the peninsula’s Gulf side. And from there things would be much easier for him.”
“I see,” said Prestimion, with a sinking feeling within. He stared at the map. The Stoienzar peninsula, Duke Oljebbin’s domain, came thrusting westward out of the lower part of Alhanroel like a gigantic thumb, reaching far out into the ocean. South of the peninsula was the main body of the Inner Sea, leading to Suvrael. On the north side of the peninsula lay the calm, tropical waters of the Gulf of Stoien; and Stoienzar’s Gulf coast was one of Majipoor’s most heavily populated regions, with a major city every hundred miles and a string of resort towns and agricultural centers and fishing villages occupying nearly all the open territory between them. If Dantirya Sambail had succeeded in reaching any part of the Gulf coast, he might well have been able to find some rogue mariner who would transport him to Stoien city, the most important port along that coast, from which ships traveled constantly back and forth between Zimroel and Alhanroel.
They had, of course, placed an interdiction on Stoien, and on all the other ports of that part of the continent that engaged in intercontinental shipping. But how reliable would that interdiction be? These easygoing tropical cities had always been notorious hotbeds of official corruption. Prestimion, in his years of training at the Castle, had studied the lively case histories. The governor Gan Othiang, who had flourished in the peninsula port of Khuif in the reign before Prankipin’s, had been in the habit of imposing a personal levy as well as the regular harbor taxes on all merchants whose ships called there; at his death, his private coffers, laden with ivory, pearls, and shells, held more wealth than the municipal treasury. Up the way at Yarnik, the mayor, one Plusiper Pailiap, had been in the habit of confiscating the property of deceased merchants whose heirs did not file a claim within three weeks. Duke Saturis, Oljebbin’s grandfather, had several times been accused of draining off a percentage of all customs revenues for his own benefit, though the governmental inquiries that followed had always been quashed for reasons that no longer were clear. A prefect of Sippulgar about a thousand years ago had covertly maintained his own fleet of pirate ships to raid local shipping. And so on. It was as if there was something in the sultry air down here that eroded rectitude and piety.
Prestimion shoved the map aside. To Kameni Poteva he said, “How long, do you think, would it have taken Dantirya Sambail, traveling by floater, to reach the port of Stoien from—”
The Prefect’s demeanor, though, had suddenly become exceedingly peculiar. Kameni Poteva was a tightly wound man at his best—that had been obvious from the start but the inner tension that must perpetually have gripped him appeared now to have heightened to a degree that was very close to the breaking point. His lean, sharp-featured face, from which the tropic sun seemed to have burned away all superfluous flesh, was drawn so tight that the skin looked to be in danger of cracking. A muscle was leaping about in his left cheek and his thin lips were twitching, and his eyes stood out fiercely, a pair of huge, bulging white orbs, below his dark forehead. Kameni Poteva’s hands were clenched into taut fists; he held them pressed together, knuckle tight against knuckle, over the two rohillas on the breast of his robe.
“Kameni Poteva?” Prestimion said, in alarm.
From the Prefect came a hoarse gasp: “Forgive me, my lord—forgive me—”
“What is it?”
Kameni Poteva’s only reply was a shake of his head, more like a shudder than anything else. His whole body was trembling. He seemed to be fighting desperately for control over it.
’Tell me, man! Do you want some wine?”
“My lord—oh, my lord—your head, my lord—?”
“What about my head?”
“Oh—I’m sorry—so sorry—”
Prestimion glanced about at Septach Melayn and Gialaurys. Was this the madness, striking right at the Coronal’s own elbow? Yes. Yes. Surely it was.
In this moment of mounting strangeness Maundigand-Klimd stepped forward quickly and extended his hands so that they rested on the Prefect’s shoulders; inclining both his heads until they were no more than inches from Kameni Poteva’s forehead, the Su-Suheris uttered a few quiet words, unintelligible to Prestimion. A spell, no doubt. Prestimion imagined that he saw a white mist appear in the air between the two men.
A few seconds passed without apparent change in Kameni Poteva’s state. Then a low hissing sound came from the Prefect’s lips, as though he were a balloon that had been inflated almost to the breaking point, and there was a perceptible easing of his posture. The crisis seemed to be ending. Kameni Poteva looked up for an instant at Prestimion, eyes wild, face livid with shame and shock, and then looked away again.
After a moment he said, in a hollow, barely audible voice, “My lord, this is unbearably humiliating—I humbly ask your pardon, my lord—”
“But what was it? What happened?—Something about my head, you said.”
A long anguished pause. “I was hallucinating.” The Prefect groped for the wine-flask. Quickly Septach Melayn refilled his bowl for him. Kameni Poteva drank greedily. “These things come, two, three times a week, now. There is no escaping them. I prayed that there would be none while I was with you, but it happened anyway. Your head, sire—it was monstrous, swollen, about to explode, I thought. And the High Counsellor—” He looked at Septach Melayn and shuddered. “His arms, his legs, they were like those of some giant spider!” He closed his eyes. “I must be dismissed from office. I am no longer qualified to serve.”
“Nonsense,” said Prestimion. “You need a little rest, that’s all. By all reports you’ve been doing a fine job. Are they something new, these hallucinations?”
“A month and a half. Two months.” The man was in misery. He was unable now to look directly at Prestimion at all, but sat with his head bowed and shoulders hunched, staring at his feet. “It is like a fit that comes over me. I see the most dreadful things. Nightmare visions, monstrosities, one after another for five, ten, sometimes fifteen minutes. Then they go away, and each time I pray that it will be the last. But there is always another time.”
“Look at me,” said Prestimion.
“My lord—”
“No. Look at me. Tell me this, Kameni Poteva. You aren’t the only one in Sippulgar who’s been suffering these disturbances, have you?”