“Are you the magus Ghambivole Zwoll?” the bigger of the two demanded, in a voice like rolling boulders. And he slid his great sword a short way into view.
Ghambivole Zwoll, swept now with a terror greater than any he had ever known in his life, shrank back against his desk. If only he could have used some magical power to thrust them out the door, he would have done so. If only. But his powers were gentle ones and these two were huge bulky ruffians, and he did not dare make even the slightest move.
“I am,” he murmured, and did what he could to prepare himself for death.
“The Prince of Muldemar will speak with you,” the big man said ominously.
The Prince of Muldemar? Here in the marketplace, in Ghambivole Zwoll’s own shop? The fifth or sixth highest noble of the realm?
Incredible. Unthinkable. The man might just as well have said, The Coronal is here to see you. The Pontifex. The Lady of the Isle.
The two huge footmen stepped aside. Into the shop came now a golden-haired man of fifty or so, short of stature and slender but broad-shouldered and regal of bearing. His lips were thin and tightly compressed, his face was narrow. It could almost have been the face Ghambivole Zwoll had often seen on coins of long ago, the face of this prince’s royal ancestor five generations removed, the great monarch Prestimion.
There was no mistaking the searing anger in the prince’s keen, intense greenish-blue eyes.
“You have supplied a potion to a certain unimportant lordling of Castle Mount,” the prince said.
Not a question. A statement of fact.
Ghambivole Zwoll’s vision wavered. His tentacles trembled.
“I am licensed, sir, to provide my services to the public as they may be required.”
“Within discretion. Are you aware that you went far beyond the bounds of discretion?”
“I was asked to fulfill a need. The Marquis Mirl Meldelleran requested—”
“You will not name him. Speak of him only as your client. You should know that your client, who committed a foul act with the aid of your skills, has taken himself at our request this very day into exile in Suvrael.”
Ghambivole Zwoll shivered. Suvrael? That terrible place, the sun-blasted, demon-haunted desert continent far to the south? Death would be a more desirable punishment than exile to Suvrael.
In a hoarse croak Ghambivole Zwoll said, “My client asked me to fulfill a need, your grace. I did not think it was my responsibility to—”
“You did not think. You did not think.”
“No, your grace. I did not think.”
There was no possibility of success in disputing the matter with the Prince of Muldemar. Ghambivole Zwoll bowed his head and waited to hear his sentence.
The Prince said sternly, “You will forget that you ever had dealings with that client. You will forget his very name. You will forget the purpose for which he came to you. You will forget everything connected with him and with the task you carried out on his behalf. Your client has ceased to exist on Castle Mount. If you keep records, Vroon, you will expunge from them all indication of the so-called service you performed for him. Is that understood?”
Seeing that he evidently was going to be allowed to live, Ghambivole Zwoll bowed his head and said in a husky whisper, “I understand and obey, your grace.”
“Good.”
Was that all? So it seemed. The Vroon gave inward thanks to the half-forgotten gods of his forefathers’ ancestral world.
But then the prince, turning, took a long glance around the cluttered shop. His gaze came to rest on the handsome flask on Ghambivole Zwoll’s desk, the flask containing the new and potent elixir that the Vroon had prepared for the Marquis Mirl Meldelleran.
“What is that?”
“A potion, your grace.”
“Another love potion, is it?”
“Merely a potion, sir.” Then, in agony, when the prince gave him a terrible glare: “Yes. One could call it a love potion,”
“For the same client as before? So that he might compound the damage he has already done?”
“I must reply that I am bound by the laws of confidentiality, sir, not to reveal—”
The Prince of Muldemar responded with a somber laugh. “Yes. Yes! Of course. What a law-abiding thing you are, wizard! Very well. Pick up the flask and drink the stuff yourself.”
“Sir?”
“Drink it!”
Aghast, Ghambivole Zwoll cried, “Sir, I must object!”
The prince nodded to one of the footmen. From the corner of his eye Ghambivole Zwoll saw the ugly glint of a saber’s blade coming once more into view.
“Sir?” he murmured. “Sir?”
“Drink it, or you’ll join your former client in Suvrael, and you’ll count yourself lucky that your fate is no worse.”
“Yes. Yes. I understand and obey.”
There could be no refusing the prince’s command. Ghambivole Zwoll reached for the flask and shakily lifted it to his beak.
Dimly the Vroon watched the Prince of Muldemar and his two footmen leaving the shop, a moment later, slamming the door behind them. It was all he could do to cling to consciousness. His head was whirling. A bright crimson haze whirled about him. He was scarcely able to think coherently.
Then through the fog that engulfed his brain he saw the shop door open again, and the huge Skandar woman Hendaya Zanzan entered to begin her evening’s work of tidying and sweeping. Ghambivole Zwoll stared at her in awe and wonder. Instantly a sudden all-consuming passion overwhelmed him. She was radiant; she was glorious; she glowed before him like a dazzling flame. He had never seen anyone more beautiful.
He ran to her, reached up, clasped his tentacles tightly around her enormous calf. His heart pounded with a great surge of desperate love. His vision blurred as tears of joy dimmed his blazing yellow eyes.
“Oh, beloved—beloved—!”
6
The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar
I had always yearned to visit Sippulgar, that golden city of the southern coast. Every schoolchild hears tales of its extraordinary beauty. But there are many places on Majipoor I yearn to visit—the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount, or at least a few of them, and marvelous Dulorn, the shining city of crystalline stone that the Ghayrog folk built in far-off Zimroel, and mighty Ni-moya on that same distant continent, and many another. Our world is a huge one, though, and life is short. I am a man of business, an expediter of merchandise, and business has kept me close to my native city of Sisivondal for most of my days.
It was the strange disappearance and presumed death of Melifont Ambithorn, my wife Thuwayne’s elder brother, that finally brought me to Sippulgar. I had hardly known Melifont at all, you understand: I had met him just twice, once at my wedding and once perhaps ten years later, when one of his many unsuccessful business ventures brought him to Sisivondal for a few days. He was fifteen years older than my wife and she seemed to regard him more as an uncle than as a brother; but when word came to her that he was thought to have perished in some mysterious and unpleasant way, she was deeply affected, far more than I would have thought, asking me to go at once to Sippulgar to see if I could discover what had happened to him, and to lay a memorial wreath on his grave, if he was indeed dead. Thuwayne herself is no traveler; she dislikes the upheavals and discomforts of even the shortest trip most intensely. But she could not bear to leave her brother’s death a mystery, and I think she entertained some hope that I would actually find him still alive. She begged me to go, and I knew that I had no choice but to do it.