"Well then, take the beasts outside the city wall and tether them in some safe place."
"Which gate?"
"Let me think—the East."
"Why not the North or the West? We are going back to Vindium, I trust."
"Fool!" exploded Jorian. "That's the first direction they'll look. We're going up the Pennerath to the first ford or bridge, then east towards Komilakh. Then north across the Fangs of Halgir to Shven and west again to the Twelve Cities."
"You mean to travel right around the Inner Sea? A frightful journey! We shall never get to Metouro in time for the meeting."
"With luck, we shall; I've studied the maps. If we are trampled by King Shaju's elephants, we shall never get there at all."
"But Shaju has elephants trained as trackers, as hounds are employed in other lands. Of all beasts, the elephant has the keenest sense of smell."
"Well, we shall have to chance it. When the beasts are secure, gather our gear and meet me at the Inner Gate of the palace."
"Why not outside the city? Prolonged questioning at the gates is to be avoided."
"I know not my way about this damned monster of a city and should get lost without you as a guide."
"Then let us meet outside the outer palace gate, thus avoiding at least two scrutinies. Use the rope to get over the walls."
"Very well. If they stop you, tell 'em we're on a secret mission for Ishvarnam, or whatever you think they'll believe. Now I'm going in to fraternize with the beauty and chivalry of Mulvan."
Inside, Jorian found that Karadur's prediction had been right. Nobles crowded about him, pressed goblets of fruit juice upon him, and told him that for a barbarian he was indeed a man of parts. One said that Jorian had merely done to Chavero what many others at court had long yearned to do themselves.
As he sipped fruit punch, Jorian reflected that at a Novarian ball he would probably have drunk himself dizzy in his triumph and so be useless for the desperate adventure ahead. Even Mulvanian asceticism, he concluded, had its uses.
At midnight, the princess Yargali heard a tap on the window panes of her bedroom. She opened the window to see Jorian, hanging by one hand from a vertical rope, about which his legs were locked, while he tapped with the other hand. As she helped him over the sill and led him into the adjoining living room, she asked:
"Good my lord, to what iss the upper end of yonder rope affixed, that it upheld you so firmly?"
"It is affixed to the afterworld, Highness. I do not fully understand the matter myself, although a magician could doubtless tell you. What have we here?" He picked up a pitcher and sniffed. "Tell me not that this is real wine, in this desert of austerity!"
"It iss indeed." She whisked the cover off a pair of golden plates, disclosing steaks. "Real flesh, also."
"By all the gods and demons of Mulvan! How do you manage it?"
She shrugged her huge shoulders, making her great globes quiver. "It iss part of the agreement betwixt myself and the Great Kings. I guard their cursed Kist, whilst they provide me with the meat and drink I wish. I should soon waste away on this Mulvanian diet, which may be good for rabbits but not for me. Now sit and devour, ere your provender cool."
Jorian did so. Between ravenous bites he asked: "How came you by this agreement, Princess?"
"Know that my people are an ancient race, who dwell in the far-off jungles of Beraoti. But, albeit longer-lived than your folk, they beget few offspring. And so they have dwindled during the last myriad of years, until there be but a handful left. As a result of a quarrel—into whose nature I will not go—I wass cast out from amongst them. And I arrived, weary and footsore, in Trimandilam in the reign of King Venu, or Venu the Apprehensive as he was called.
"King Venu greeted me hospitably, but after a while he began to worry over the fact that I ate thrice as much as did he and his better-fed subjects and insisted, moreover, upon forbidden flesh. As his sobriquet implies, he wass one of those who are not happy unless they are unhappy over some impending peril, if you understand me, no? He wass a worrier.
"He also worried about the Kist of Avlen, since there had been two attempts to steal it—one by stealth, the other by bribing those who guarded it. The latter attempt would have succeeded had not one of the bribe-takers suffered a rush of conscience and betrayed the plot. For this, he wass promoted to captain whilst the others were trampled by the king's elephants—an eventuality which hiss so-sensitive conscience had doubtless foreseen.
"So King Venu conceived the idea of skewering two worries with one lance, by making me official guardian of the Kist, in return for which he furnished me with this apartment and with food, drink, and servants to enable me to live in comfort. And that agreement has now been in effect more than five hundred years."
"I should think," said Jorian, "that Your Supernatural Highness would find it oppressive to be cooped up in this one suite, day after day."
"I do not mind, for I do not have the traveler's itching foot, as you men so often have. I have seen Trimandilam and need not refresh my view of it. And I like not the way the Mulvanians of the lower classes stare at me as if I were some sort of monster. My servants bring me news of the outer world, and I am content with this place, which I have redecorated every century to my taste. Now sit beside me on this divan and tell me some of the tales you promised." She refilled the goblets. "For ensample, the tale of the disaster that your King Filoman brought upon Kortoli, when he had a ghost for his minister. I have never heard of putting a ghost to such a use."
Jorian quaffed deeply. "This was early in his reign, when he had occasion to appoint a new minister to replace one who had died. He had reigned for several years in a fair state of justice, order, and prosperity, but it grieved him that some Kortolians still lived lives of vice and crime, for all he had done by precept and example to better things. To remedy this state of affairs, he determined to enlist the services of the wisest man in the Twelve Cities.
"By diligent inquiry, he learnt that the man with the repute of such wisdom was a philosopher from Govannian, named Tsaidar, who was said to be the most learned man in all Novaria.
"But, when Filoman sent a messenger to Govannian, to tender an offer of honorable employment to this Tsaidar, the messenger learnt that the learned doctor had but lately died. When word of this reached King Filoman, he wept with frustration. But his chamberlain said that all hope had not yet fled. There dwelt in the hills of southern Kortoli a witch hight Gloe, who was an able sorceress and a person of good repute, notwithstanding that she had never been able to obtain a licence as lawful wizardess from Filoman's government. Since Tsaidar had but recently died, his spirit might not yet have passed on to its next incarnation, either on this plane or on the next, and therefore could possibly be raised by Gloe to advise the king.
"So Filoman sent to fetch Gloe to Kortoli City, promising immunity for her illicit practice of magic. And Gloe burnt her powders and stirred her cauldron, and shadows gathered without material objects to cast them, and the flames of the candles flickered although there was no breeze to flutter them, and hideous faces, dissolving into one another, appeared in the smoke, and the palace trembled, and the king was seized with freezing cold. And there in the pentacle stood the ghost of Tsaidar the philosopher.
" 'Why disturb you me?' said the ghost in the thin, squeaky voice that ghosts have. 'I was studying a treatise on logic amongst the neglected old manuscripts in the library of the Grand Bastard of Othomae and had just come upon a new statement of the law of the excluded middle, when you snatched me hither.'
"Well, Gloe explained King Filoman's purpose. The ghost said: 'Minister, eh? Well, now, that is different. All my life I sought to find a ruler who would accept my advice and run his realm by logic, but I never found one. I gladly accept your offer, sire. What is the first problem I can solve for you?'