“Ah, but not to them,” said Septach Melayn.
Indeed. This was a world in and of itself, this midnight market of Bombifale, thought Prestimion. It existed outside the normal bounds of Majipoor, and neither Pontifex nor Coronal had any authority here.
The inspector of weights and measures and his Hjort herald moved solemnly onward, deeper into the marketplace. Prestimion and Septach Melayn followed in their wake.
Dealers in divination devices had their stalls here. Prestimion recognized some of their wares from the training he had undertaken while in Triggoin. This sparkling stuff in small cloth packets was zemzem-dust, to sprinkle on those who were gravely ill in order to know the course that their malady would take. Its source was Velalisier, the haunted ruined capital of the ancient Metamorphs. These charred-looking little loaves were rukka-cakes, which had the capacity to influence the course of love-affairs; and this slimy stuff was mud of the Floating Island of Masulind, that had the power of guiding one in commercial transactions. This was the powdered delem-aloe, that told when it was a woman’s fertile time of the month by bringing out thin red circles around her breasts. And this curious device—
“That is of no value whatever, my lord,” said someone suddenly to his left, someone with a deep, resonant voice that reached Prestimion from a point high above. “You would do well not to squander your attention on it.”
Prestimion was holding, just then, a little machine in the form of a magic square, which, when manipulated by an adept, was reputed to give answers to any question in numerical form that required decoding. He had picked it up idly from a table. At the unexpected comment from the stranger at his side he tossed it down again as though it were as hot as a burning coal, and glanced up at the speaker.
It was, he saw, another of the Su-Suheris kind: a towering ivory-skinned figure clad in a simple black robe belted with a red sash, whose high-vaulted leftward head was staring down at him with a cool dispassionate gaze, while the other one was looking off in a different direction entirely.
Prestimion felt an instant sense of innate discomfort and distaste.
It was hard to feel at ease with these tall two-headed beings, so strange was their appearance, so frosty their mien. One could far more easily adapt to the presence of great furry four-armed Skandars, or tiny many-tentacled Vroons, or even the reptilian Ghayrogs that had settled in such numbers on the other continent. Outworlders like Skandars and Vroons and Ghayrogs were no more human than Su-Suheris folk, but at least they had just one head apiece.
Prestimion had his own reasons for antipathy toward the Su-Suheris race, besides. Sanibak-Thastimoon, Korsibar’s private magus, had been a Su-Suheris. It was the icy-souled Sanibak-Thastimoon, perhaps more than anyone else, who had prodded the malleable, foolish Korsibar onward to his catastrophic usurpation with false predictions of a glorious success. It was by virtue of spells cast by Sanibak-Thastimoon that Korsibar’s forces had managed to keep the upper hand in the civil war for so long. And it was in the final moments of that war, when all was lost for Korsibar, that Sanibak-Thastimoon, finding himself under attack by his defeated and now desperate puppet-Coronal, had slain Korsibar and had taken the life of his sister Thismet as well, when in fury she had rushed at him brandishing the fallen Korsibar’s sword.
But Sanibak-Thastimoon had perished moments later at the hand of Septach Melayn, and the very fact of his existence had been swept away, along with so much else, by the sorcerers who had blotted the civil war from the world’s memory. This Su-Suheris here, whoever he might be, was a different one entirely, who could hardly be held accountable for the sins of his kinsman. And the Su-Suheris people, Prestimion reminded himself, were citizens of Majipoor with full civil rights. It was not for him to treat them with disdain.
Therefore he answered calmly enough, “You have reason, I suppose, to mistrust these little machines?”
“What I feel for them, my lord, is contempt, rather than mistrust. They are useless things. As are most of the devices offered for sale in this place.” The two-headed being swept his long gaunt arm about the room in a wide-ranging gesture. “There is true divination and there is the other kind, and these are, by and large, contemptible useless products manufactured for the sake of deceiving foolish people.”
Prestimion nodded. Very softly he said, gazing up far above him into the alien creature’s chilly emerald-hued eyes, “You called me ‘my lord.’ Twice. Why?”
Those eyes narrowed in surprise. “Why, because it is fitting and proper, my lord!” And the Su-Suheris flicked his bony fingers outward in the starburst gesture. “Is that not so?”
Septach Melayn moved closer in, hand to the pommel of his sword, face dark with displeasure. “I tell you, fellow, you are much mistaken. This is a line of chatter you’d be wisest not to pursue any further.”
Now both heads were trained on Prestimion from that great height, and all four eyes were focused keenly on the Coronal’s sturdy, compact figure. In a voice that could not have been heard by anyone but Prestimion and his companion the left-hand head said, “Good my lord, forgive me if I have done anything wrong. Your identity is obvious. I had no idea you meant to go undetected.”
“Obvious?” Prestimion tapped his false beard, tugged at his black wig. “You see my face, do you, beneath all this stuff?”
“I perceive your nature and standing quite easily, my lord. And that of the High Counsellor Septach Melayn beside you. These things cannot be hidden by wigs and beards. At least, not from me.”
“And who may you be, then?” Septach Melayn demanded.
The two heads inclined themselves in a courteous bow. “My name is Maundigand-Klimd,” the Su-Suheris said suavely. It was the right head that spoke, this time. “A magus by profession. When my calculations showed that you would be in this place tonight, it behooved me, I felt, to place myself in your presence.”
“Your calculations, eh?”
“Rather different ones, I must tell you, from the ones performed with such devices as these.” Maundigand-Klimd laughed frostily and pointed to the magic-square machines on the table before them. “They make a pretense at magic, and a worthless pretense at that. What I practice has the true mathematics at the heart of its divining.”
“It is a science, then, your prognosticating?”
“Most distinctly a science, lordship.”
Prestimion glanced across, at that, at Septach Melayn. But his countenance studiously revealed nothing at all.
To Maundigand-Klimd he said, “So there was nothing accidental, then, about your being here next to me in this place just now?”
“Oh, my lord,” said Maundigand-Klimd, with the closest thing to a smile that Prestimion had ever seen on the face of a Su-Suheris. “There is no such thing as an accident, my lord.”
8
“Follow this way if you please, Lord Prestimion,” said Navigorn of Hoikmar. He and Prestimion were at the entrance to Lord Sangamor’s tunnels, that tangled maze of underground chambers with brilliantly glowing walls that a Coronal of thousands of years before had caused to be constructed on the western face of Castle Mount. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever had occasion to be in this place before, your lordship,” Navigorn said. “It’s quite extraordinary, really.”
“My father brought me here once, when I was a small boy,” said Prestimion. “Just to let me see the show of colors in the walls. The tunnels hadn’t been used as a prison, of course, for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
“Not since the time of Lord Amyntilir, in truth.” The sentry on duty stepped aside as they approached. Navigorn touched his hand to the shining metal plate in the door and it swung obediently open, revealing the narrow passageway that led to the tunnels proper. “What a perfect site for dungeons, though! As you can see, the only access is through this easily guarded corridor. And then we continue underground right out to Sangamor Peak, which juts up from the Mount in such a way that it’s impossible to scale, impossible to reach in any way except from beneath.”