Keltryn found that mystifying. “But—what—”
Fulkari turned to face her. “Do you have any idea what it involves, being the Coronal’s wife? The endless work, the responsibilities, the official dinners, the speeches? You ought to take a look at the schedule they post for the Lady Varaile. It’s a nightmare. I don’t want any part of it. Maybe I’m foolish, Keltryn, maybe I’m shallow and silly, but I can’t do anything about what I’m like. Marrying the Coronal seems to me very much like volunteering to go to prison.”
Keltryn stared. There was real torment in Fulkari’s voice, and Keltryn had no doubt of her pain. She felt a rush of compassion for her; but then, almost immediately after, came annoyance, anger, even outrage.
She had always thought of herself as the child, and Fulkari as the woman, but all of a sudden everything was reversed. At twenty-four, Fulkari seemed to think that she was still a girl. But did she believe she was going to be a girl all the rest of her life? Did she want nothing more for herself than going riding in the meadows, and flirting with handsome men, and sometimes making love with them?
Keltryn knew that it was best not to continue pressing her sister on any of this. But words came pouring out of her despite herself.
“Forgive me for saying this, Fulkari. But I’m amazed by what you’ve just told me. You’re in love with the most desirable and important man in the world, and he loves you and wants to marry you. But he’s about to become Coronal, and you say it’s just too much trouble to be the Coronal’s wife? Then I have to tell you you are a fool, Fulkari, the biggest fool that ever was. I’m sorry if that hurts you, but it’s true. A fool. And I’ll tell you something else: if you don’t want to marry Dekkeret, I will. If I can ever get him to notice me, that is. If I could put on ten or fifteen pounds, I’d look just like you, and I’ll learn to do whatever it is that men and women do with each other, and then—”
Coldly Fulkari said, “You’re talking nonsense, Keltryn.”
“Yes. I know I am.”
“Then stop it! Stop! Stop!” Fulkari was crying now. “Oh, Keltryn—Keltryn—”
“Fulkari—”
Keltryn rushed toward her. Held her tight. Felt her own tears coursing down her cheeks.
7
Jacomin Halifice said, “The Lord Gaviral respectfully requests your presence at his palace, Count Mandralisca.”
Mandralisca looked up. “Is that how he said it, Jacomin? ‘Respectfully requests’?”
Halefice smiled for perhaps half a second. “The phrase was my own, your grace. I thought it sounded more courtly to say it so.”
“Yes. I dare say you did. It didn’t seem like Gaviral’s style at all.—Well, tell him I’ll be there in five minutes. No, let’s make it ten, I think.”
Let Gaviral respectfully wait. Mandralisca glanced down at the Barjazid helmet, lying before him on his desk in a little glittering heap. He had been playing with it all afternoon, donning it and sending his mind out into the world, testing the powers of the thing, trying to coax from it more knowledge of what it could do, and he wanted a little time to review what he had achieved.
He had so little control over it, so far. He could not direct it toward any particular region of the world, nor could he choose to make contact with any specific individual. Barjazid had assured him several times that they would eventually solve the directionality problem. Aiming the power of the helmet at any one person was a more difficult challenge, but Barjazid seemed to think that in time that could be achieved also. Certainly both things had been possible with earlier models, such as the one that Prestimion had used to strike down Barjazid’s brother Venghenar. This newer one had greater range and delicacy of effect—it was a rapier, not a saber, capable not simply of inflicting massive injury but of inducing light deflections in the minds it touched—but certain other qualities of precision had been lost.
Meanwhile, Barjazid said, it would be a good idea for Mandralisca to practice using the helmet daily, to accustom himself to its operation, to build up in himself the mental resilience needed to withstand the strains it imposed on the operator. And so he had. Day after day, he had visited citizens of Majipoor at random, sliding into their minds, tickling their souls with little unpleasant suggestions. It was interesting to see what kind of impact it was possible to have, even on a well guarded mind.
He had found that he was able to enter almost anyone he chose, though sleeping minds were much more vulnerable than waking ones. He could break down the defenses of the soul with a few deftly placed jabs, just as he had been able to do so splendidly in his baton-dueling days, when his agility of movement and his superior reflexes had brought him championship after championship in the tournaments, and, what was even more valuable, the great approbation of Dantirya Sambail. Using the helmet was very similar. In the tournaments, one did not wield the baton as a bludgeon; one baffled and bewildered one’s opponent with it, besieging him so with lightning-swift flicks of the pliant nightflower-wood stick that he left himself open for the climactic attack. Here, too, Mandralisca had discovered, it was best to undermine the victim’s own sense of purpose and security with a few light prods and nudges, and let him continue the process of destruction on his own. The gardener in Lord Havilbove’s park, the custodian of the bamboo palace at Ertsud Grand, the hapless calendar-keeper at that Hjort village, and all the rest of them—how easy it had been, really, and how pleasing!
Why, just today—
But the Lord Gaviral had respectfully requested his presence at his palace, Mandralisca reminded himself. One must not keep the Lords of Zimroel waiting unduly long, or they grow petulant. He slipped the helmet into the pouch at his hip where it resided whenever it was not in use, and set out up the path to Gaviral’s hilltop palace.
The palaces of the Five Lords appeared impressive from the outside, but their interiors reflected not only the haste with which the entire outpost had been constructed but the general tastelessness of the brothers. The architect—a Ghayrog from Dulorn, Hesmaan Thrax by name—had designed them to inspire awe in viewers approaching them from below: each of the five buildings was a huge dome of smooth and perfectly set tile, gray with a red undercast, rising to a great height and topped with the red crescent moon that was emblematic of the Sambailid clan. Within, though, they were bare echoing halls with rough unfinished walls and oddly mismatched furnishings badly placed.
Gaviral’s home was the best of the sorry lot. Its main hall was a vast soaring space that a great man like Confalume would have expanded easily into, and further enhanced with his own grandeur—he had never seemed out of place amidst the immensity of the throne-room he had built for himself at the Castle—but a petty creature like Gaviral was diminished by it. He seemed an irrelevance, an afterthought, in his own high hall.
As the eldest son of Dantirya Sambail’s brother Gaviundar, he had been entitled to first choice of the rich possessions that once had adorned the Procurator’s superb palace in Ni-moya. To him had fallen the most admirable of the statuary and hangings, the floor-coverings woven from the pelts of haiguses and steetmoy, the strange sculptures fashioned of animal bone that Dantirya Sambail had brought back from some expedition into the chilly Khyntor Marches of northern Zimroel. But all these treasures had suffered some abuse over the years, especially during the time following the death of Dantirya Sambail when mountainous drunken Gaviundar had inhabited the procuratorial palace. Many of the finest things were battered and chipped and stained, mountings had come unsprung, cracks had developed in delicate and irreplaceable objects. And now that they had descended to Gaviral’s custody they were negligently, almost randomly, displayed, strewn here and there about the echoing oversized chambers of the building like the neglected toys of some indifferent child.