“Prince Akbalik? Your pardon, prince, sir—”
It was Odrian Kestivaunt, the Vroon who served as his secretary here. The little creature stood by the door, fidgety as always, his multitude of dangling tentacles coiling and uncoiling nervously in a way that Akbalik had had to train himself to tolerate. He was carrying yet another stack of papers.
“More things for me to read, Kestivaunt?” said Akbalik, and made a sour face.
“I have already looked these over, Prince Akbalik. And have discovered something quite interesting in them. They were taken from freighters departing from various Stoienzar ports for Zimroel in the past two weeks. If you will allow me, prince, sir—”
Kestivaunt carried the papers to the desk and began to lay them out as though they were playing-cards in a game of solitaire. They were cargo manifests, Akbalik saw, long lists of commodities interspersed with some sea-captain’s comments on their condition as of the day they were taken on board, the quality of their packaging, and other such matters.
Akbalik glanced over the Vroon’s sloping shoulders as the small being dealt the sheets out. So many quintals of honey-lotus, so many sacks of madarate gum, so many pounds of orokhalk, so many adzes, awls, axe-handles, pack-saddles, sledgehammers—
“Is it really necessary for us to be doing this, Kestivaunt? ”
“One moment more, I entreat you, good prince. There. Now: I call your attention to the seventh line of the first manifest. Do you see what is entered there?”
“ ‘Anyvug ystyn ripliwich raditix,’ ” Akbalik read, mystified. “Yes. I see it. But I don’t make any sense out of it. What is it, something in Vroonish?”
“It’s more like Skandar than anything else, I would say. But not very much like Skandar. This is not, I think, any language spoken on Majipoor. But to continue, sir, if you wilclass="underline" line ten of this second manifest.”
“ ‘Emijiquk gybpij jassnin ys.’—What is this gibberish, man?”
“A coded message, perhaps? For look, look here, sir, line thirteen of the next paper: ‘Kesixm ricthip jumlee ayviy’ And line sixteen of the next: ‘Mursez ebumit yumus ghok.’ The nineteenth line of the next an orderly progression from sheet to sheet, is that not so?” The Vroon shuffled the papers excitedly, holding one and then another under Akbalik’s nose. “This nonsense is interpolated in otherwise ordinary texts at progressive intervals of three lines. We are missing, I think, the first two lines of the message, which would be on the first and fourth lines of documents we do not seem to have here. But it goes on and on: I have found forty lines of it so far. What could it be, if not a code?”
“Indeed. It sounds too absurd to be anyone’s language. But there are codes and codes,” Akbalik said. “This could all be nothing but some merchant’s way of hiding trade secrets from his competitors.” He glanced at another sheet. Zinucot takttamt ynifgogi nhogtua. What if that meant, Ten thousand troops setting out next week? He felt a sudden quiver of excitement. “Or, on the other hand, what we have here might well be some sort of communication between Dantirya Sambail and his allies.”
“Yes,” said the Vroon. “It might well be that. And codes are readily enough broken by those who are expert in that art.”
“Are you referring to yourself, perhaps?” Vroons, Akbalik knew, had many divinatory skills.
There came a writhing of tentacles in a gesture of negation. “Not I, sir. This is beyond me. But an associate of mine, a certain Givilan-Klostrin—”
“That’s a Su-Suheris name, isn’t it?”
“It is, yes. A man of unimpeachable honor, to whom such texts as these would be readily accessible.”
“He lives here in Stoien?”
“In Treymone, sir, the city of the tree-houses. That’s just a few days’ voyage up the coast from here, by way of—”
“I know where Treymone is, thank you.” Akbalik paused in thought a moment. In these months of working together he had developed a good deal of trust in this Odrian Kes-tivaunt, but involving some unknown Su-Suheris in such an explosive affair was another matter entirely. A little behind-the-scenes research would be in order first. The double-headed folk all seemed to know one another. He would ask Maundigand-Klimd for an opinion before bringing in Givilan-Klostrin.
Geenux taquidu eckibin oeciss. Emajiqk juqivu xhtkip ss.
Akbalik pressed the tips of his fingers to his aching temples. Did this mumbo jumbo, he wondered, conceal the secret plans of Dantirya Sambail? Or was it merely the private lingo of some shaggy Skandar merchant mariner?
Zudlikuk. Zygmir. Kasiski. Fustus.
Off to Castle Mount went a query to the magus Maundigand-Klimd. Back from the Castle, in due course, came Maundigand-Klimd’s reply. Givilan-Klostrin, he said, was well known to him: a person in whom prince Abrigant could have absolute faith. “I vouch for him,” said Maundigand-Klimd, “as though he were my brother.”
A sufficiently impressive recommendation, Akbalik decided. He sent for Odrian Kestivaunt. “Tell your Su-Suheris friend,” he said, “to get himself down to Stoien city right away.”
But the sight of the actual Givilan-Klostrin made Akbalik wonder about the merit of Maundigand-Klimd’s endorsement.
Maundigand-Klimd himself, for whom Akbalik had the highest respect, was a person of great dignity of bearing, indeed, of considerable personal grandeur, which was heightened by the monastic simplicity of his dress. Tastes in clothing at the Castle generally ran to the flamboyantly bright and bizarrely original, but Maundigand-Klimd mainly favored austere robes of black wool, or sometimes one of dark-green linen, with only a red sash to provide a bit of vivid color.
This Givilan-Klostrin, though, arrived at Akbalik’s office clad in a grotesque patchwork outfit of gold-embroidered brocade decked with squares of blazing silk in half a dozen clashing colors, and his two long-crowned heads were topped with a pair of towering five-pointed hats whose tips reached almost to the ceiling of the room. Half a dozen huge round staring eyes with great swirling brows were painted on each of the hats, three in front, three behind. Rigid up-jutting epaulets rose eight or ten inches from each of the oracle’s shoulders: they too were tipped with eyes, and narrow scarlet banners streamed downward from them.
The whole effect was probably intended to be awesome, but Akbalik found it absurdly comical. It was something that a mendicant fakir might wear, a wandering beggar who told fortunes in the marketplace for a couple of crowns. The Su-Suheris was horrifyingly cross-eyed, besides, the left eye of his right head peering over toward the right eye of the left head in a way that made Akbalik’s insides squirm.
I vouch for him as though he were my brother, Maundigand-Klimd had said. Akbalik shrugged. He would not have wanted a brother anything like Givilan-Klostrin; but, then, he was not a Su-Suheris.
“I am the house of Thungma,” Givilan-Klostrin declared portentously, and waited.
The Vroon had explained that part already. Thungma was the invisible spirit, the demon, the whatever-it-was, with whose consciousness Givilan-Klostrin made contact when he entered his divinatory trance. Givilan-Klostrin functioned as the “house” of the being during the time of his summoning.
The Su-Suheris, who stood with feet planted wide and arms folded across his chest, seemed to fill the room. He stared icily at Akbalik.
“The fee comes first,” Odrian Kestivaunt whispered. “This is extremely important.”
“Yes. I understand that. Tell me, Givilan-Klostrin: what will this consultation cost?” Akbalik asked, feeling almost seasick as he struggled to make eye contact somehow with the magus.