More likely the latter, Thastain decided: though he had reason to regard himself as one of Mandralisca’s special favorites, he knew it was foolish to believe that he had any more real significance for the Count than his leather boots or the cutlery he used at dinner. Thastain understood quite well by now that he was here simply as something for Mandralisca to use. The only person whose existence held any sustained importance in Mandralisca’s mind was Mandralisca himself.
“This is Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp,” declared Thastain, stumbling over the difficult name, though he tried his best to prolong and roll the double letters as the visitor had done. “Of Uulisaan.”
“Ah. From Uulisaan,” Mandralisca repeated, savoring the word with real delight. He seemed to disappear into a mood of meditative contemplation for a moment or two. Then, to Thastain:—“Do you know where Uulisaan happens to be, dear duke?”
Thastain kept his face expressionless. This duke thing was beginning to annoy him now.
“Not at all, your excellence.”
Mandralisca glanced toward Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp, who had remained just within the arching doorway, standing hunched up against the wall in that weird awkward stiff-bodied way of his. “It is in Piurifayne, is it not, my friend? The southwestern part of the province, over on the Gonghar side?”
“That is correct, milord Mandralisca,” said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp.
Piurifayne?
The word ran through Thastain’s mind like a fiery sword. Piurifayne was the province of the Metamorphs, the Shapeshifters, the race that had ruled the planet before the first human settlers arrived. Piurifayne, yes. Nobody ever went there; but everyone knew about it, that wild primordial rain forest in central Zimroel, lying between the mountains of the interior and the swift River Steiche, where the Shapeshifters had been compelled to live for the past seven thousand years. Lord Stiamot had ordered them to be penned up in there after completing his conquest of them in the Shapeshifter War; and there they remained, mysterious and aloof, dwelling completely apart from the other races that had come to colonize the planet that once had been theirs, and generally feared by them.
How could this man be from Piurifayne? No one but Shapeshifters lived in Piurifayne. And Shapeshifters were forbidden by ancient law to leave it, although it was common knowledge that from time to time they did, disguised as humans or sometimes as Ghayrogs, to move surreptitiously on shadowy errands through the cities of the settled world.
So that could only mean—
“Now do you understand, my good duke?” said Mandralisca, giving Thastain his most icy smile. And, to Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp: “Perhaps it would be more comfortable for you to take another form, my friend—”
“If it would be safe to do so here—” said the Metamorph, with quick glances toward Thastain, toward Jacomin Halefice, toward Khaymak Barjazid.
“They are my colleagues,” said Mandralisca grandly. “Have no fear.” And with that assurance Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp at once began to undertake the shift out of human guise.
It was something that Thastain had never seen before. He had never even dreamed that he would. Like nearly everyone he knew, he looked upon the Shapeshifters with horror and a kind of dread: terrifying, archaic creatures, unfathomable, unknowable, lurking out there in their jungles full of poisonous resentment of the people who had displaced them from their world, plotting who knew what ultimate revenge for that displacement. The thought of actually being in the same room with one made his flesh creep.
But he watched in astonishment, unable to turn his eyes away, as the Metamorph writhed and shivered within his odd, ill-fitting clothing like a creature preparing to molt its skin, and the features of his curious face seemed to grow soft and blurry and indistinct—they were actually flowing—and his hunched-up shoulders commenced a weird dance of their own, jerking and twisting about as though trying to turn at right angles to his spine—
A few moments more and the transformation was finished. The man whom Thastain had brought to this room was gone, and in his place was a different being, frail-looking, elongated and angular, with sallow, faintly greenish skin and inward-sloping eyes that had no pupils and knife-sharp cheekbones and slitlike lips and a tiny, almost invisible nose.
A Metamorph. A Shapeshifter.
Thastain still had trouble believing it: a creature out of forbidden Piurifayne, standing no more than a dozen feet away from him. Here in the office of Count Mandralisca, by express invitation of the Count himself.
The Vorthinar lord, up there in the north, had been in league with Shapeshifters—Thastain had seen one up there himself, walking patrol in front of the keep, the first and only time before this that he had. But that was one of the reasons, so he thought, that the Five Lords had deemed it desirable to break the Vorthinar lord’s power. One did not consort with Metamorphs. It was like allying oneself with demons. But now—Mandralisca himself—a Shapeshifter right here in the procuratorial palace—
Thastain looked toward Jacomin Halefice, and then toward Khaymak Barjazid. But they betrayed no signs of surprise or dismay. Either they had mastered the art of concealing such feelings in the presence of the Count, or they had already been aware of the identity of the mysterious visitor.
Mandralisca gathered the Barjazid helmet into his two cupped hands, the way one might gather up a little pile of treasured coins, and held it out in front of him. “This is our little weapon,” he said to the Metamorph, “the device with which we will free our continent from the grip of our Alhanroel masters. Our experiments with it have been quite fruitful so far.” He nodded across at Khaymak Barjazid. “We are indebted to this man for making it available to us.”
“And with this small device,” said Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp, “it is possible to reach into any mind in the world, you say?” The thick, contorted accent was gone, now that the Metamorph had resumed his own form. His voice had become silken-smooth. “And to wield power over that mind?”
“So it would appear.”
“The Coronal’s mind? The Pontifex’s?” The Metamorph paused. “Or the Danipiur’s, say?”
“It seemed to me altogether too dangerous, too provocative, to meddle with the minds of the Coronal or the Pontifex,” Mandralisca replied smoothly. “I assure you that I could do it if I chose; but I have not so chosen. I will tell you, though, that I’ve successfully reached the minds of certain members of the Pontifex’s family: his brother, his mother, his wife, his child. By way of letting him know our capabilities, so to speak.—You understand that this is in the strictest confidence, to be shared with no one other than the Danipiur herself. And as for the Danipiur—no, no, of course, I would never attempt to tamper with the mind of the great queen whose ambassador you are.”
“But you could, if you wanted to?”
“Very likely I could. But to what purpose? It would only offend and repel. The Piurivars are our friends. As you know, we regard you as allies in our great struggle.”
Thastain was as thunderstruck by that calm statement as he had been by the first revelation of the Shapeshifter’s identity. Allies? Was that what Mandralisca had in mind? Human and Metamorph, fighting side by side against the forces of the Pontifex and the Coronal?
He must, Thastain thought. Why else was this creature here? And why else would Mandralisca be speaking so respectfully of the Shapeshifter queen, or so politely calling the Shapeshifters by their own name for themselves?
“Would you like to see a little demonstration of our helmet?” Mandralisca asked pleasantly. He dangled the device in Thastain’s direction. “Here, Duke Thastain. Suppose you slip this over your head and show our friend how it functions.”