“I think he may be giving us a subtle hint,” said Dinitak. “But five royals would be too ostentatious, perhaps. Let’s see if I have something smaller.” He scooped a handful of coins from his purse, selected a bright one-royal coin, and tossed it into the bowl. There was a little round of applause from the other onlookers. Here in the provinces, even a single royal had substantial purchasing power.
“On another day,” the storyteller continued, with a grateful look toward Dinitak, “I saw a demonstration of a related kind performed by the great magus Wiszmon Klemt, who produced a thick bronze chain of fifty yards in length and hurled it into the air as easily as you would toss your hat aloft. It remained standingly rigidly upright, as though fastened to something invisible overhead. Then animals were brought forward: a jakkabole, a morven, a kempile, a gleft, even a haigus. One by one they scrambled up the chain until they came to the very top, and there they immediately disappeared. When the last of the beasts had vanished, the magus snapped his fingers and the chain came tumbling down to land neatly coiled at his feet; but of the animals that had disappeared, nothing was seen again.”
“This is very entertaining,” said Dekkeret, “but not, I think, particularly useful. Shall we move on?”
“I suppose we should,” Dinitak agreed.
As they started up the pathway that ran past the aisle of entertainers a plump, oily-skinned man in a soiled crimson robe detached himself from the crowd and stepped in front of them. Dekkeret saw that he had a little astrological amulet of the kind called a rohilla pinned to his breast, strands of blue gold wound around a lump of pink jade. Confalume, that superstitious man, had worn one of those constantly. Around this man’s throat was an amulet of some other sort that Dekkeret could not name. A flat triangular ivory pendant inscribed with mysterious runes dangled below it. That he was a professional magus was a reasonable guess.
Which was swiftly confirmed. “Tell you your future, my master?” the man said, looking up at Dekkeret.
“Nay, I think not,” Dekkeret replied, affecting a coarse east-country inflection. The last thing he wanted in this place was a magus, even one who, like this one, was most likely a charlatan, peering into his soul. “I have me no more than a few coppers to my name, and you’d want more than that of me, eh, master?”
“Perhaps your rich friend, then. I saw him throw that big coin in the pot.”
“Nay, he is na’ interested neither,” said Dekkeret. And, to Dinitak: “Come along now, will ye?”
But the magus was not so easily put off. “The two of you for fifty weights! A mere half a crown, a third my usual price, because the fees have been so slow today. What do you say, my masters? Fifty weights, the two of you? A trifle. A pittance. And I will sketch for you a map of the road that lies ahead.”
Again Dekkeret shook his head.
Dinitak, though, laughed and said, “Why not? Let’s see what’s in our stars, Dekkeret!” And before Dekkeret could protest further Dinitak pulled out his purse again, plucked five square copper coins, ten-weight pieces, from it, and pressed them into the sorcerer’s hand. The magus, grinning triumphantly, clamped his hand around Dinitak’s wrist, peered close into Dinitak’s eyes, and began to murmur something intended to pass for a formula of divination.
Despite his misgivings Dekkeret found himself wondering what the man was going to tell them. Given his own skepticism toward all things magical and the general look of disreputability about this marketplace magus, he had no expectation at all of anything of value coming forth. But the degree of inaccuracy in the man’s predictions might be amusing. If he saw Dinitak opening a shop in Alaisor and becoming a successful merchant, say. Or undertaking a journey to some fabulous place that he had always dreamed of seeing, like Castle Mount.
The baffling thing that happened next was not amusing in the slightest, though. Halfway through the mumbled recitation of the formula the grin disappeared, and the magus abruptly halted his chant and clapped a hand over his mouth as though he were about to be sick. His bulging eyes stared out at Dinitak in an expression of absolute shock and horror and fear. It was the way one might look at someone who has just revealed himself to be the carrier of a deadly plague.
“Here,” the astrologer said. His voice was thick with dread. “Keep your fifty weights, my master! I am unable to perceive your horoscope. I have no choice but to return your money.” From a pocket of his robe he drew Dinitak’s five coins. Then, seizing Dinitak’s wrist, the magus dumped the coins back into his palm and went scuttling hastily away, glancing back a couple of times in that same horrified way before losing himself in the crowd.
Dinitak’s swarthy face was weirdly pale, and he was biting down hard on his lower lip. His eyes were wide with amazement. Dekkeret had never seen him as rattled as this. Dinitak looked stunned by the consultation’s abrupt end. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Am I so frightening? What did he see?”
9
“Thastain, with someone who’s here to meet with Count Mandralisca,” Thastain announced to the cold-eyed Ghayrog guard who stood in front of the building that once had been the procuratorial palace.
The Ghayrog gave him only the most perfunctory of flickering glances. “Enter,” he said automatically, and stepped aside.
After all this time Thastain still could not fully accept the fact that all he needed to do was speak his name and he would be admitted to the fabulous palace that once had been the home of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail. It was hard enough for him to believe that he was actually living in the city of Ni-moya at all. For a boy who had grown up in an unimportant little provincial town like Sennec, merely to visit Ni-moya was the ambition of a lifetime. “See Ni-moya and die,” the proverb went, in the part of the country that he came from. To find himself right in the heart of that greatest of all cities, living just a few hundred yards from the palace and able to walk in and out of that extraordinary building unchallenged, was a stunning thing.
“Have you ever been in Ni-moya before?” he asked the stranger that he was escorting to the Count.
“This is my first time,” the man said. He had an odd thick-tongued accent that Thastain was unable to place: Zies eesz may vfeerst tiyme. His documents listed his place of residence as Uulisaan. Thastain had no idea where that might be. Perhaps it was in some remote district on the southern coast, far down below Piliplok. Thastain knew that people from Piliplok spoke with a strange accent, and maybe those who lived even farther down the coast spoke even more strangely.
But there was very little about this visitor that Thastain did not find strange. In recent months a whole procession of curious characters had come here on business with Mandralisca. It was Thastain’s responsibility to meet them at the hostelry where most such visitors were put, conduct them to the official headquarters of the Movement on Gambineran Way, check out their appointment documents there, and lead them into the palace for their meetings with the Count. He had grown accustomed to seeing all sorts of marginal types pass through, an odd assortment of individuals who all too plainly moved along the weirder, more dimly lit edges of society. Mandralisca seemed to have a great appetite for people of that sort. This one, though, was perhaps the most curious of them all.