And there it came again: a weird throttled sound that seemed to be trying to be a shriek, but was emerging instead as a moan. From its pitch, she thought she recognized the voice as that of Simbilon, who although he was nearly eleven still had a clear, pure contralto. So it was to his room that she went first, making her way uncertainly through the bewildering complex of rooms that was the imperial residence. A bobbing globe of orange slave-light drifted just overhead, illuminating her path.
But Simbilon lay sleeping peacefully amidst his clutter of books, a dozen or more scattered all around him on the bed and one still open, the pages flattened across his chest where the book had fallen when sleep overtook him. Varaile lifted it from him and set it beside his pillow, and went from the room.
The strange sound came to her again, more urgent, now. It frightened her to think that one of her children might be making a sound like that. Hastily she crossed the hall and entered the room where Tuanelys slept in a tumbled heap of stuffed animals, her bed mounded high with furry blaves and sigimoins and bilantoons and canavongs and ghalvars, and even a long-nosed manculain, her current favorite, transformed by the maker’s hand into something cuddly and charming, though the real manculains of the jungles of Stoienzar, covered all over by poisonous yellow spines, were as far from cuddly as animals could be.
But no stuffed animals surrounded her now. Tuanelys apparently had flung them pell-mell in all directions, as if they were nasty vermin that had invaded her bed. Even the beloved manculain had been discarded: Varaile saw it across the room, lying upside down on the little girl’s dresser, where, as it landed, it had jostled aside a dozen or so of the pretty little glass vessels that Tuanelys liked to collect. Several seemed to be broken. As for Tuanelys herself, she had kicked off her coverlet and lay in a tight little huddled heap, knees drawn up almost to her chin, her whole form rigid, her nightgown pulled up and bunched under her arms so that her small slim body was bare. She was glossy as though with fever. A pool of sweat had stained the sheet about her.
“Tuanelys, love—”
Another moan that wanted to be a shriek. A ripple of convulsive force ran through the girclass="underline" she grimaced, shuddered and shivered, kicked out with one leg and then the other, clenched her fists, pulled her head down into her shoulders. Varaile lightly touched her shoulder. Her skin was cool, normaclass="underline" no fever. But Tuanelys shrank away at the touch. She began to moan again, a moan that turned swiftly into a racking sob. Her features were distorted into a hideous mask, eyes tight shut, nostrils flaring, lips pulled back, teeth bared.
“It’s only me, sweetheart. Shhh. Shhh. Nothing’s wrong. Mother’s here. Shhh, Tuanelys. Shhh.”
She tugged at the girl’s nightgown, drew it down over her waist and thighs, turned her so that she lay on her back, and gently stroked her forehead, all the while continuing to murmur gently to her. Gradually the tension that had gripped Tuanelys seemed to ease a little. Now and again a ripple of response to some horrendous inner vision still went through her, but such things were beginning to come farther apart, and the terrible mask that her face had become relaxed into her normal visage.
Varaile became aware of someone standing over her shoulder. Prestimion? No: Fiorinda, Varaile realized. She had awakened and come down the hall from her own lodgings to see what was the matter. “A nightmare,” Varaile said, without looking around. “Fetch a bowl of milk for her, will you?”
Tuanelys’s eyes fluttered open. She seemed dazed, disoriented, more bewildered even than one might expect a child to be who had been awakened in the middle of the night. This was only her second week of living in the Labyrinth. They had tried to arrange her room here to be as much as possible like the one she had had at the Castle, but, even so—the disruption of her life, the magnitude of the upheaval—
“Mommy—”
Her voice was hoarse. The word was one that she hadn’t used in two years or more.
“It’s all right, Tuanelys. Everything’s all right.”
“They had no faces—only eyes—”
“They weren’t real. You were dreaming, love.”
“Hundreds and hundreds of them. No faces. Just—eyes. Oh, mommy—mommy—”
She was quivering with fear. Whatever vision had impinged upon her sleeping mind was still alive within her now. Bit by bit she began to describe to Varaile what she had seen, or tried to, but the descriptions were fragmentary, her words largely incoherent. She had seen something awful, that was clear. But she lacked the ability to make the nightmare real for Varaile. White creatures—mysterious pallid things—a marching horde of faceless men—or were they giant worms of some sort?—thousands of staring eyes—
The details scarcely mattered. A little girl’s nightmares would have no significant meaning; the thing that was significant was that she was having nightmares at all. Here in the safety of the Labyrinth, in these coiling chambers at the very bottom of the imperial sector, something dark and fearful had succeeded in reaching down to touch the mind of the daughter of the Pontifex of Majipoor. It was not right.
“They were so cold,” Tuanelys was saying. “They hate everything that has warm blood in its veins. Dead men with eyes. Sitting on white mounts. Cold—so cold—you touched them and you froze—”
Fiorinda reappeared, bearing a bowl of milk. “I warmed it a little. The poor child! I wonder if we should put a drop of brandy in it.”
“Not this time, I think. Here, Tuanelys, let me pull the covers up over you. Drink this, sweetheart. It’s milk. Just sip it—slowly, a little at a time—”
Tuanelys sipped from the bowl. The strange fit seemed to be passing from her. She was looking around for her stuffed animals. Varaile and Fiorinda gathered them up and arranged them beside her on the bed. She found the manculain and thrust it under the coverlet, up close against herself.
Fiorinda said, “Teotas also, all last month, the most horrible nightmares. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s having one of them right now.—Do you want me to stay with her, Varaile?”
“Go back to sleep. I’ll look after her.”
She took the emptied milk bowl from Tuanelys’s hand and lightly eased the little girl’s head down against her pillow, holding her there, stroking her to guide her onward, back into sleep. For a moment or two Tuanelys seemed completely calm. Then a fresh shudder went through her, as though the dream were returning. “Eyes,” she murmured. “No faces.” That was where it ended. Within minutes she was peacefully sleeping. Light little-girl snores came from her. Varaile stood watch over her for a time, waiting to be completely sure that all was well. It seemed to be. She tiptoed out and went back to her own bedroom, where she found Prestimion still sound asleep, and lay by his side, awake, until the Labyrinth’s sunless dawn arrived.
Standing before the Lord Gaviral in the great hall of Gaviral’s palace, Mandralisca idly tossed the Barjazid helmet from one hand to the other, a gesture that had virtually become a tic for him in recent weeks.
“A progress report, my lord Gaviral,” he said. “The secret weapon of which I’ve spoken, this little helmet here? I’ve gone far in mastering its use.”
Gaviral smiled. His smile was not a heartwarming thing: a quick twitch of his meager little lips, baring a ragged facade of largely triangular teeth, and a chilly glow flashing for an instant in his small deep-set eyes. He ran his hand through his coarse and thinning covering of dull-red hair and said, “Are there any specific results to report?”
“I’ve penetrated the Castle with it, milord.”
“Ah.”
“And the Labyrinth.”
“Ah. Ah!”