“Even she?” Dekkeret said. He seemed to register the news with the deepest interest. “Nothing so savage as the ones that afflicted Teotas, I do sincerely hope. The man was in ruinous condition when I met with him. Pale, bloodshot, trembling. He told me straight out that he dreaded going to sleep each night, for fear of the dreams. Whatever resolution of the Fiorinda problem we might have tried to work out became impossible to discuss, because those dreams of his had wrecked him so. He said that he had become convinced, through his dreams, that he was unworthy of being High Counsellor. He begged me to release him from the appointment. Which I suppose I simply should have done, considering the shape he was in. But I wanted him, Prestimion, I wanted him badly. I asked him finally to put the whole matter aside for one more week, and it seemed to me as he was leaving that he had agreed to that.”
“But instead, feeling terrible shame and guilt over having told you he wanted to decline the appointment, and not wanting to go through the whole thing again with you the following week, he headed straight from your office to some remote spire of the Castle, clambered out to the edge, and jumped off.”
“No.”
“That was what I was told that he did.”
“He jumped, yes. But not right after his meeting with me. It was in the afternoon that I saw him. It was in the middle of the night when he fell to his death.”
“Yes. I did know that, actually. There was talk that he’d been sleepwalking. Which would make it an accident, rather than suicide.”
“It was neither, Prestimion.”
“You really believe that he was murdered?”
“There is a device—a little metal helmet: do you remember it?—that allows one to reach across great distances and interfere with the workings of someone else’s mind. With my own eyes I beheld you using such a helmet fifteen years ago.”
“Of course. The one that your friend Dinitak stole from his father and brought to us to use against Dantirya Sambail.”
“Which was a copy of an earlier one, you recall, that Dinitak’s father Venghenar had stolen from the Vroon who invented it, and which he employed in the Procurator’s service.”
“All these deadly helmets have been kept under seal in the Treasury ever since those days. Is it your notion that someone’s made off with one of them and was using it against Teotas?”
“The Barjazid helmets are still at the Castle, where they belong, and all of them remain under our control,” Dekkeret replied. “But there are other Barjazids beside Dinitak in this world, Prestimion. And other helmets.”
“You know this to be a fact?”
“Dinitak is my source. His father’s younger brother, Khaymak Bar-jazid by name, still lives, and still understands the making of the helmets. It was this Khaymak who used to construct the things for Venghenar when they all lived in Suvrael long ago. He continues to possess the plans and sketches he used. While you were still Coronal, he came to the Castle to offer some new and improved model to you, but Dinitak found out about it first and turned him away, not wanting anyone of his sort sniffing around at court. So Khaymak took himself off to Zimroel and sold the helmet plans to a certain Mandralisca, whose name you will, I think, remember.”
Dekkeret’s words fell upon Prestimion with devastating impact. “The poison-taster? He’s still alive?”
“Evidently so. And in the service of five extraordinarily loathsome brothers who happen to be the the nephews of our old friend Dantirya Sambail. And they, as I have only just begun to discover, have launched some sort of local insurrection against our rule in a desert district of central Zimroel.”
“This is beginning to move too quickly for me,” Prestimion said. He poured fresh bowls of brandy for them both, and took a long, slow sip. “—Let us go back a little. This Khaymak Barjazid has put a mind-controlling helmet in the hands of Mandralisca the poison-taster?”
“Yes.”
“And—surely this is where you have been heading with all of this—Mandralisca has used the helmet to reach into Teotas’s mind and drive him to the edge of insanity. Over the edge, indeed, to the point where he would take his own life.”
“Yes, Prestimion. Precisely so.”
“What’s your proof of this?”
“I authorized Dinitak to withdraw one of the old helmets from the Treasury and conduct a little investigation with it. He reports that mental broadcasts are emanating from somewhere in the vicinity of Ni-moya. He believes the operator is none other than Mandralisca, who appears to have been striking randomly all over the world. And not always randomly, since one of his broadcasts was aimed at Teotas, with the results that we all have seen.”
“You believe that what Dinitak says is true?”
“I do.”
“And how long have you known all this?”
“About three days.”
Once again Prestimion felt the whirlwinds of chaos roaring through his mind. “You heard me say that my little daughter Tuanelys has been having bad dreams. Varaile, occasionally, too. My brother, my daughter, my wife: can it be that this Mandralisca has found a way of making the Pontifex’s own family his target?”
“That could be so.”
“And the Pontifex next? Or the Coronal?”
“No one is safe, Prestimion. No one.”
My brother. My daughter. My wife.
Prestimion closed his eyes and pressed the tips of his fingers to the lids. A tumultuous welter of emotions surged through him: fury, foremost, but sadness, also, and a bleak sense of exhaustion of the spirit, and even fear. Had the Divine, he wondered, placed some curse on his entire reign? First the Korsibar usurpation, and then the plague of madness that had been the consequence of his high-handed act in wiping out the entire world’s memories of the civil war, and then the attempt by Dantirya Sambail to unseat him. Now these new vermin, these five brothers, spurred to yet another rebellion by this devilish Mandralisca, who seemed to have a dozen lives—and, worst of all, an invisible threat reaching even into his family itself—
When he looked at Dekkeret again he saw that the younger man was regarding him worriedly, even tenderly. In haste Prestimion strove to restore his mantle of regal poise.
“I am reminded,” he said, slowly, calmly, “of Maundigand-Klimd’s prophecy that a Barjazid would somehow make himself a Power of the Realm. I told you of that, did I not? Yes. You thought he might have been speaking of Dinitak, and scoffed at that, and I warned you not to take the prophecy too literally. Well, we will have no Barjazids as literal Powers of the Realm, I think, but here is one who is certainly wielding power, in the abstract sense. We will locate him before he does further harm, and take his helmets from him, and see to it that he is able to build no more of them. And we’ll deal at last with that serpent Mandralisca, too, and pull his fangs.”
“That we will.”
“You will report to me daily, Dekkeret, concerning any further discoveries Dinitak may make.”
“Absolutely.” Dekkeret finished the last of his brandy. “The uprising, or whatever it is, in Zimroel needs handling also. I may go there in person to deal with it.”
Prestimion lifted an eyebrow. “Under the pretext of a grand processional, you think? So early in your reign? And so far?”
“I should do whatever seems appropriate, Prestimion. I’ve only just begun to consider what that will be. Let’s discuss this further, shall we, after the funeral.—Do you plan to remain here at Muldemar for any length of time?”
“A few days, only. At most a week.”
“And then back to the Labyrinth, is it?”