Dekkeret did not feel that any of this required an immediate governmental response. He expected that he soon would have confirmation of Dinitak’s reports arriving by way of more orthodox channels, along with greater detail of what actually was taking place, and he would wait until those reports had come. Then he and Prestimion together, when they met as planned a month or two from now at the coastal city of Stoien, could work out a fitting strategy for dealing with these troublesome Ni-moyans.
The royal party reached Shabikant a short while past noon, when the city, spreading before them for many miles to the north and south on the broad sandy plain that bordered the eastern bank of the Haggito, lay basking in the warmth of the bright mid-country sunlight.
Shabikant was a city of four or five million people, evidently something of a metropolis as the cities of this region went—a pretty place of graceful buildings of pink or blue stucco topped with ornate roofs of green tile. The mayor and a party of municipal officials came riding out to greet Dekkeret and his companions, and much bowing and starburst-making and speechifying took place before they finally were escorted into town.
The mayor—his title was hereditary and largely ceremonial, one of Dekkeret’s aides whispered to him—was a rotund, red-faced, green-eyed little man named Kriskinnin Durch, who appeared generally overwhelmed at finding himself playing host to the Coronal Lord of Majipoor. Apparently Lord Dekkeret was the first Coronal to have visited Shabikant in several centuries. Kriskinnin Durch seemed unable to get over the fact that this great event was taking place during his own administration.
But he nevertheless wasted no opportunity in letting Dekkeret know that he himself was descended on his mother’s side from one of the younger brothers of the Pontifex Ammirato—a not very significant monarch of four hundred years before, as Dekkeret recalled. “Then you are of far more distinguished lineage than I am,” Dekkeret told him amiably, amused rather than annoyed by the man’s bare-faced pretentiousness. “For I am descended from no one in particular at all.”
Kriskinnin Durch seemed not to have the slightest idea of how to respond to such a bland statement of humble origins coming from the Coronal Lord of Majipoor. He chose, therefore, to pretend that Dekkeret had not uttered it.
“You will, of course, pay a call on the Trees of the Sun and the Moon while you are among us?” the mayor went on.
“That was my very intention,” said Dekkeret.
Fulkari, speaking so that only he could hear, said, “They all seem to be descended from the brothers of Pontifexes on their mother’s side, these backwoods mayors. And from beggars and thieves and counterfeiters on their father’s; but it all averages out, doesn’t it?”
“Hush,” said Dekkeret, with a quick wink and a light squeeze of her hand.
By way of a royal hostelry he and Fulkari were provided with a pleasant pink-walled lodge right at the river’s edge, which probably was usually employed to house the mayors of nearby cities and other such regional functionaries when they came calling on Kriskinnin Durch. Dinitak and the rest of Dekkeret’s staff were taken off to lesser lodgings nearby.
“I most sincerely hope you will find everything here to your liking, my lord,” said the mayor obsequiously, and, backing away, bowed himself out of their presence.
His chambers, Dekkeret saw, were large but lacking in grace of design. They were furnished in the overstuffed style that had been popular nearly a century ago in the early years of Lord Prankipin’s reign—everything covered with heavy brocaded upholstery and resting on squat, ungainly legs. A scattering of drab crude paintings that surely had to be the work of local artists decorated the walls, most of them hanging slightly askew. The whole place was almost exactly as he would have expected. Quaint, Dekkeret thought: very quaint.
The mayor had tactfully given Lord Dekkeret and the Lady Fulkari separate suites, since no reports of any royal marriage had reached the city of Shabikant and people tended to be quite fastidious about such matters out in these agricultural provinces. But the two suites were, at least, adjacent, and there was a connecting door, bolted closed, that was not at all difficult to open. Dekkeret began to think the mayor might not be quite as stupid as he had seemed on first encounter.
“What are these Trees of the Sun and the Moon?” Fulkari asked him, when they were finished installing themselves in their rooms and their various chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting had gone off to their own quarters. Dekkeret had thrown the bolt and come into her suite, where he found Fulkari lolling in a great tub of blue stone, lazily scrubbing her back with a huge brush whose long handle was of such a strange zigzag design that it might just as easily have been some kind of implement of witchcraft.
“As I understand it,” he said, “they’re a pair of fantastically ancient trees that are supposed to have the power of oracular speech. Not that anyone’s heard them say anything for the past three thousand years or so, I hasten to add. But a Coronal named Kolkalli came here somewhere back then while making a grand processional and went to see the trees, and precisely at sunset the male tree spoke, and said—”
“These trees have sexes?”
“The Tree of the Sun is male and the Tree of the Moon is female. I don’t know how they can tell. Anyway, the Coronal came to the trees at sunset and demanded that they predict his future, and at the moment the sun sank below the horizon the male tree said thirteen words in a language that the Coronal couldn’t understand. Kolkalli became very excited and asked the priests of the trees if they would translate it for him, but they claimed that nobody in Shabikant was able to speak the language of the trees any more. In fact they did understand it, but they were afraid to say anything, because what the tree had uttered was a prophecy of the Coronal’s imminent death. Which happened three days later, when he was stung on the finger by a poisonous gijimong and died in about five minutes, which is essentially the only thing that is remembered about the Coronal Lord Kolkalli.”
“You believe this?” Fulkari asked.
“That the Coronal was stung on the finger by a gijimong and died? It’s in the history books. One of the shortest reigns in Majipoor’s history.”
“That the tree actually spoke, and it was a prophecy of his death.”
“Verkausi tells the story in one of his poems. I remember studying it in school. I confess I don’t quite see how a tree would be capable of speech, but who are we to quarrel about plausibility with the peerless Verkausi? I take a neutral position on the subject, myself.”
“Well, if the trees do say anything tonight, Dekkeret, you mustn’t let the locals slither out of translating the message.” Fulkari brandished her fists in a pose of mock ferocity. “ ‘Translate or else,’ you’ll tell them! ‘Translate or die! Your Coronal commands it!’ ”
“And if they tell me that the tree has just said that I’ve got three days to live? What do I do then?”
“I’d keep away from gijimongs, just for a starter,” Fulkari replied. She extended one long, slender arm toward him. “Help me out of the tub, will you? It’s got such a slippery bottom.”