The guest-lodge of Mereminene Hall was a place of shining adamantine floors and vermilion-tiled walls and faceted windows intricately set in lead, easily worthy of housing a visiting Coronal. The main house must surely be even grander, Dekkeret thought. And this was a mere country estate. Old Dantirya Sambail had not been one to stint, it seemed. But why would he? In his time he had been king of Zimroel, effectively, and no doubt had wanted to equal in a single generation all that the Coronals of Castle Mount had built for themselves over thousands of years.
Nor was there any stinting of hospitality by this Gavahaud, either. The lodge swarmed with platoons of bowing servants; rare wines and exotic fruits aplenty were supplied for the delectation of the guests if they cared to refresh themselves upon arrival; their bed-linens were of the finest manufacture, glowing warm-hued silks and satins.
A chamberlain came within an hour with word that there would be a formal dinner that evening, adding that it was the wish of the Lord Gaviral that no discussions of serious matters should be expected until the following day.
The Lord Gaviral—he who styled himself Pontifex of Zimroel—came to the guest-lodge an hour after that, alone, simply dressed, unarmed, and on foot. Dekkeret was surprised at how small a man this Gaviral was, no taller than Prestimion and much less solidly built: flimsy-framed, in fact, with the constantly moving eyes and twitching lips of a man who is uneasy in his spirit. He had heard that these Sambailids were massive hulking ugly men as the old Procurator and his brothers had been, and certainly Gavahaud fit that description, but not this one, who had some of the ugliness but none of the size. Only by his rank plume of orange-red hair and his broad, wide-nostriled nose was his kinship with the tribe of Dantirya Sambail confirmed.
But he was courtly enough, speaking well and making every show of respect for his royal visitor, and behaving not in any way like one who has proclaimed himself to be a lord and even a Pontifex in defiance of all the natural order of things. He inquired merely whether the Coronal found his lodgings suitable, and hoped that his lordship’s appetite would be equal to the feast that awaited him. “I regret that two of my brothers have been unable to join us for this meeting,” said Gaviral. “The Lord Gavinius is unwell, and could not leave Ni-moya. The Lord Gavdat, who practices the study of magery, has remained behind as well, because he is in the midst of important prognosticatory calculations that he feels must not be interrupted even for so important a gathering as this.”
“I regret their absence,” said Dekkeret courteously, although Septach Melayn had already told him that Gavinius was a revolting drunken fool, and the other one, Gavdat, evidently was a fool of a different kind, forever lost in the claptrap of geomantic studies. But courtesy would cost him nothing; and he was only too well aware that it made no difference whether he met with one Sambailid brother, or five, or five hundred. Mandralisca was the force to reckon with. And of Mandralisca nothing at all so far had been said.
It was evening, now. Banquet time.
As Dekkeret had suspected, the late Procurator had indeed lived here on a truly regal scale. The main house was a massive stone pile with some seven or ten great-windowed halls radiating from its core, and the banquet hall was the greatest of all, a tremendous gallery of rugged antique design, with bare red beams of bright thembar-wood, and rough heavy walls of mortared boulders piled to an astounding height. And this at the country estate of a provincial lordling; what was the procuratorial palace at Ni-moya like, Dekkeret wondered, if Dantirya Sambail’s mere country retreat had been a place of this sort?
The big room was fulclass="underline" the entire court of the Five Lords must be here, Dekkeret thought. Protocol was somewhat strained at the high-table seating. Dekkeret, as Coronal, was entitled to the center position, with Fulkari at his side. But the Lord Gaviral claimed at least for the time being to be the Pontifex of this continent, whatever that meant, and the Lord Gavahaud his brother, as the actual owner of Mereminene Hall, was the putative host of the meeting. Which one of them would sit at the Coronal’s right hand? There was much murmuring, and in the end Gavahaud deferred to Gaviral, and let him take the seat of honor beside Dekkeret, but not before some further confusion involving the third brother, the Lord Gavilomarin, who had appeared now also, a blinking, watery-eyed lump of a man with a blithering smile and a general air of witlessness about him. He took the central seat without asking, apparently choosing it at random, and had to be moved along toward the end of the dais, down by Septach Melayn and Gialaurys. Dinitak was seated at the opposite end.
Where, Dekkeret asked himself, was the infamous Mandralisca?
His name had not so much as been mentioned thus far. That seemed very odd. In the awkward first moments after taking his seat Dekkeret said to Gaviral, by way of having anything to say at all, “And your privy counsellor, of whom I’ve heard so much? Surely he is here tonight, but where?”
“He dislikes the prominence of the dais,” said Gaviral. “You will find him over there on the left, against the wall.”
Dekkeret glanced in the direction Gaviral indicated, far across the room to an ordinary table set amidst many others. Though he had never seen Mandralisca, he recognized him at once. He stood out from all those around him like death at a wedding feast: a pallid, somber, harsh-faced, thin-lipped man garbed in a tight-fitting suit of shining black leather that was altogether without ornament except for some large, bright pendant of gold, no doubt an emblem of office, on a chain around his neck. His hard, glittering eyes were trained directly on Dekkeret, nor did he flinch away as the Coronal’s gaze came to rest on him.
So that is Mandralisca, Dekkeret thought. After all this time, he and I are no more than a hundred feet apart.
He found himself fascinated by the man’s chilly, repellent face and sinister aura. There was an unquestionable magnetism about him, a diabolical force. Tremendous demonic power of will was evident in his features. Dekkeret understood now how this man, the embodiment of all that had bedeviled Prestimion throughout the years of his otherwise glorious reign, could have caused so much trouble in the world for so many years. Here was a truly dark soul; here was one whose very existence made one wonder about the Divine’s purpose in creating him.
After a long moment the contact between Majipoor’s Coronal and the Lord of Zimroel’s privy counsellor broke, and it was Mandralisca who was the first to look away, in order to make some remark to his table-companions. There were three of those: a round-faced common-looking man of middle years or a little more, a handsome, open-faced lad with golden-white hair who could not have been more than eighteen or nineteen, and a small, swarthy-skinned, squinch-eyed fellow who beyond any question had to be Dinitak’s despised helmet-making uncle, Khaymak Barjazid of Suvrael.
Servitors brought wine around, and filled all their bowls. Dekkeret wondered idly whether Dantirya Sambail’s old custom of taking a poison-taster with him wherever he went might not have been appropriate here. Though it seemed absurd, he put his hand over Fulkari’s when she reached in an automatic way for her wine-bowl, and held her back.
She gave him a questioning look.
“We must wait for the toast,” he whispered, not knowing what else to say.
“Oh. Of course,” she said, looking a little abashed.
The Lord Gaviral was on his feet, now, wine-bowl in his hand. The hall grew silent. “To amity,” he said. “To harmony. To concord. To the eternal friendship of the continents.”
He looked toward Dekkeret and drank. Dekkeret, realizing now that his wine had been poured from the same flask as Gaviral’s, rose and returned the toast with equally empty generalities, and drank also. It was superb wine. Whatever else would happen here at Mereminene Hall, they were not going to be poisoned this evening, he decided.