7
“The midnight market of Bombifale!” said Septach Melayn grandly, and beckoned Prestimion forward with a sweeping gesture of his broad-brimmed hat.
Prestimion had visited Bombifale many times before. It was one of the closest of the Inner Cities, just a day’s journey below the Castle, and no one would dispute its rank as first in beauty among the cities of the Mount. Once, many hundreds of years earlier, it had given Majipoor a Coronal—Lord Pinitor—and Pinitor, a hyperactive and visionary builder, had spared no expense in transforming his native city into a place of wonder. The burnt orange sandstone of its scalloped walls had been brought from the forbidding desert country back of the Labyrinth by countless caravans of pack-animals; the spectacular four-sided slabs of blue seaspar inlaid in those walls came from an uninhabited district along Alhanroel’s eastern coast that had rarely been explored before or since; and all along the perimeter of the city the walls were crowned with an uncountable series of slim, graceful towers of the most delicate design, giving Bombifale the magical look of a city that has been built by supernatural creatures.
But not all of Bombifale was magical and delicate and fantastical. Where Prestimion and Septach Melayn stood just now—on a patch of cracked and furrowed pavement sloping sharply downward into a dimly lit district of slant-roofed warehouses at the city’s outer rim, no great distance within Lord Pinitor’s fabled walls—was as squalid and dank-smelling a place as one might expect to find in some fifth-rate port town.
Something about this neighborhood seemed familiar. Perhaps the bundles of loosely wrapped trash piled against the building walls, Prestimion thought. Or the stench of stagnant sewage too close nearby. And the ramshackle look of the nearby brick-walled buildings, ancient ones leaning crookedly up against one another, rang chimes in his memory.
“I’ve been in this part of town before, haven’t I?”
“Indeed you have, my lord.” Septach Melayn indicated a small, shabby inn on the far side of the street. “We stayed here one night not long before the war, when we were coming back from the Labyrinth after the Pontifex’s funeral as outcasts, returning to the Castle to see whether Korsibar could make good on his seizure of the throne.”
“Ah. I do remember. We had churlish unwilling hospitality at yonder hostelry that night, as I recall.” And added, speaking very softly, “You shouldn’t call me ‘my lord’ in this place, Septach Melayn.”
“Who’d believe it, in such a place, looking as you do?”
“Even so,” said Prestimion. “If we come in secrecy, let’s be secretive about all things, is that agreed? Good. Come, now: show me this midnight market of yours.”
It was not that Prestimion feared for his safety. No one would dare raise a hand against the Coronal in this place, he was certain, if his true identity should be discovered. In any event he could look after himself in any brawl, and the swordsman had not yet been born who could deal with Septach Melayn. But it would be deeply embarrassing to be found out—Lord Prestimion himself, skulking around this seamy, disreputable place in a grease-stained cloak and patched leggings, with half his face muffled up in a beard as black as Gonivaul’s and a wig of rank, mushroom-colored hair falling to his shoulders? What possible reason could he offer for such an excursion? He’d be the butt of Castle jokes for months, if the story ever got around. And it would be a long time before Kimbar Hapitaz, the commander of the Coronal’s guard, permitted him to slip away from the Castle so easily again.
Septach Melayn—he was in disguise too, a hideous mop of red hair stiff as straw hiding his immaculate golden ringlets, and a shaggy, ragged black neckerchief concealing his elegantly tapered little beard—led him down the weed-speckled road toward a huddle of dilapidated buildings at the end of the street. There were only the two of them. Gialaurys had been unable to accompany them on this adventure; he was off in the north, chasing after the artificially-created war-monsters that Korsibar had never had a chance to use in the war. Some of them had broken loose and were devastating the unfortunate Kharax district.
“In here, if you will,” Septach Melayn said, pulling a heavy, creaking door aside.
Prestimion’s first impressions were of dimness, noxious fumes, noise, chaos. What had appeared from the outside to be a group of buildings was actually one long, low structure divided into narrow aisles that stretched on and on until their farthest reaches were lost to sight. A string of glowfloats bobbing near its rafters provided the primary lighting, which was far from adequate. An abundance of smoldering torches mounted in front of the various booths provided little additional illumination and a great deal of foul black smoke.
“Whatever sort of thing you may care to buy,” Septach Melayn murmured in his ear, “it will be available for purchase somewhere in here.”
Prestimion had no doubt of that. It seemed that an infinite array of merchandise lay before him.
Much of what he saw at the booths closest to the entrance was the sort of stuff one might find in any marketplace anywhere. Huge burlap bags of spices and aromatics—bdella and malibathron and kankamon, storax and mabaric, gray coriander and fennel, and many more besides; various kinds of salt, dyed indigo and red and yellow and black to distinguish them from one another; fiery glabbam powder for the hot stews beloved of Skandars and sweet sarjorelle to give flavoring to the sticky cakes of the Hjorts, and much more. Beyond the spice-peddlers were the meat-vendors, with their offerings dangling in great slabs from huge wooden hooks, and then the sellers of eggs of a hundred different kinds of birds, eggs of all hues and some startling shapes, and after them the tanks where one might purchase live fishes and reptiles, and even young sea-dragons. Deeper yet and they were peddling baskets and panniers, fly-whisks and brooms, palm mats, bottles of colored glass, cheap beads and badly made bangles, pipes and perfumes, carpets and brocaded cloaks, writing-paper, dried fruits, cheese and butter and honey, and on and on and on, aisle after aisle, room beyond room.
Prestimion and Septach Melayn passed through a place of wickerwork cages, where live animals were being sold for uses which Prestimion did not care even to guess. He saw sad little bilantoons huddled together, and snaggle-toothed jakkaboles, and mintuns and droles and manculains and a horde of others. At one point he turned a corner and found himself staring into a cage of sturdy bamboo that contained a single smallish red-furred beast of a kind he had never beheld before, wolf-like, but low and wide, with enormous paws, a broad head that was huge in proportion to its body, and thick curving yellow teeth that looked as though they could not only rip flesh but easily crush bone. Its yellow-green eyes glared with unparalleled ferocity. A stale smell came from it, as of meat that had been left too long to dry in the sun. As Prestimion looked at it in wonder, it made a deep ugly sound, midway between a growl and a whine, throbbing with menace.
“What is that thing?” he asked. “It’s the most hideous beast I’ve ever seen!”
“A krokkotas, it is,” said Septach Melayn. “It roves the northern desert-lands, from Valmambra eastward. They say it has the power of imitating human speech, and will call a man’s name by night in the wastelands, and when he approaches, it pounces and kills. And devours its victim down to the last scrap, bones and hair and toenails and all.”
Prestimion made a sour face. “And why would such an abomination be put up for sale in a city marketplace, then?”
“Inquire of that from the one who offers it,” Septach Melayn said. “I myself have no idea.”
“Perhaps it’s best not to know,” said Prestimion. He stared at the krokkotas once more; and it seemed to him that its whining growl had intelligible meaning, and that the beast was saying, “Coronal, Coronal, Coronal, come to me.”