Robert Silverberg - The King of Dreams

“Has the name of a certain Mandralisca been mentioned?” Dekkeret asked. “Does he figure in this in any way?”

“His signature was on the proclamation we received,” said Kelmag Volvol. “Count Mandralisca of Zimroel, yes, as privy counsellor to his majesty the Lord Gaviral.”

“Count, no less,” muttered Septach Melayn. “Count Mandralisca! Privy counsellor to his majesty the Pontifex Lord Gaviral! Has come a long way from the days when he was tasting the Procurator’s wine to see if it’d been poisoned, that one has!”

“You asked for me, your grace?” Thastain said.

Mandralisca nodded curtly. “Bring me the Shapeshifter, if you will, my good duke.”

“But he is gone, sir.”

“Gone? Gone?”

Mandralisca felt a momentary surge of fury and dismay so wildly intense that it astounded him with its force. Only for a moment; but in that moment it had seemed to him that he was being swept through the air in the teeth of a hurricane. It was a frightening overreaction, and not the first of its kind in recent days.

He hated these spells of soul-vertigo that had begun coming over him lately. He hated himself for succumbing to them. They were a mark of weakness.

The boy must see it, too. He was staring.

Mandralisca forced himself to say more calmly, “Gone where, Thastain?”

“Back to Piurifayne, I think, sir. Summoned home by the Danipiur to deliver his report, I believe.”

Stunning news. Mandralisca felt another whirlwind go roaring through his mind.

He groped for the riding crop that always lay on his desk, gripped its handle until his knuckles were white, shoved it aside. To quiet himself he went to the window and stared out. But that only made things worse, for he found himself looking into the rain. For the past three days Ni-moya had been pelted by surprising rains, a deluge beyond all expectation this late in the summer, when the long dry season of autumn and winter should be coming on. Everything beyond the window was a blank gray wall. The river, though it lay just below, could not be seen at all. Nothing there but gray, gray, gray. And the unending drumming of the rainfall against the great quartz window of his office had already begun to be maddening. Another day and it would have him screaming.

Calm. Stay calm.

But how? Dekkeret—the word had just come in—had landed safely in Piliplok, with many troops. And Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had taken himself back to Piurifayne for a chat with his queen.

“He left,” Mandralisca said, “and I wasn’t told? Why not? We had an important meeting scheduled for today, he and I.” The red tide of anger was mounting again. “The Metamorph ambassador unexpectedly sets out for home without troubling to stop in at my office to take his leave of the privy counsellor, and no one says anything to me!”

“I had—no idea, sir—I never thought—”

“You never thought! You never thought! Exactly, Thastain: you never thought.”

He had wanted the words to sound icy-cold, but they came out as a kind of throttled screech. Mandralisca thought his head was going to explode. Khaymak Barjazid had told him just the other day that it was risky to be using the helmet as much as he was. Perhaps that might be so; perhaps it could be making him just a little unstable, he thought. Or maybe it was simply the tension he felt now that the hour of the long-dreamed-of war of independence was at hand. But he had never had so much difficulty maintaining his self-control. And this was no moment to be losing control.

Not with Dekkeret in Piliplok. And the Metamorph ambassador gone.

For the second time in a minute and a half Mandralisca fought back his own overloaded emotions and struggled to think things through.

The plan to fortify the entire coast against the Coronal had long since been scrapped. In the end Mandralisca had abandoned the idea on the grounds that it was one thing to invite the people of Zimroel to join the rulers of Ni-moya in a general declaration of independence, and something else again to ask them, this early in the uprising, actually to lift their hands against an anointed Coronal. Better to let the vengeance-hungry Shapeshifters handle Dekkeret, Mandralisca had decided, finally, after weeks of inner debate. But suddenly that decision was beginning to look like a significant strategic error, a gamble that had gone wrong. The force of Shapeshifter guerillas that Mandralisca had been negotiating to place in the forests along Dekkeret’s likely route north did not yet exist. And now the Shapeshifter ambassador himself had vanished. His essential ally. His secret weapon against the Alhanroel government.

The Danipiur had already been told the essence of Mandralisca’s proposal, civil freedom for her people in return for their military aid against Dekkeret. Perhaps Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp had simply gone home to discuss with the Danipiur the final details involved in deploying the troops Mandralisca had requested.

Perhaps.

Why, though, had the Shapeshifter not said anything about that to him first? Possibly something much more disquieting was going on: something more like a Shapeshifter change of heart about the entire enterprise. What had seemed so simple earlier was now beginning to present unexpected challenges.

But anger was the wrong response, he knew. Fear, despair, anxiety—all useless. It was much too early in the campaign to give panic a foothold. There were always going to be surprises, setbacks, miscalculations.

In the softest tone he could manage Mandralisca said, “I should have been informed right away, Thastain. I regret that I wasn’t. But there’s nothing that can be done about that now, is there?—Is there, Thastain?”

“No, your grace.” The merest whisper.

The boy was white-faced and trembling. It seemed to be all he could do to meet Mandralisca’s gaze. Was he expecting to be beaten for his negligence? The riding crop, maybe? Mandralisca had not seen Thastain so fear-stricken since the early days at the desert headquarters out by the Plain of Whips.

But terrorizing the underlings would serve no useful purpose now. The sudden departure of Viitheysp Uuvitheysp Aavitheysp might or might not be a serious development, though at the very least it raised the possibility of major complications and confusions. But, no matter what the Shapeshifter might be up to, Mandralisca told himself, it was far from sensible just now to be alienating valuable members of his own staff. And Thastain was valuable. The boy was loyal; the boy was helpful; the boy was intelligent.

Mandralisca said, “What I want you to do now, Thastain, is to get yourself out into the Grand Bazaar, talk to one of the shopkeepers, tell him that I want him to put you in contact with some senior member of the Guild of Thieves.—You know about the guild of official thieves of Ni-moya, Thastain? How they operate in the bazaar in cooperation with the merchants, taking a certain regulated percentage of goods for themselves in return for guarding the place against greedy free-lance thieves who don’t understand when enough is enough?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. Talk to the thieves, then. They have connections with the local Shapeshifter community. This city’s swarming with Shapeshifters, you know. There are more of them here than you’d ever believe, lurking all around the place. Get in touch with them. Use my name. If you have to throw money around, then throw it freely. Tell them that I have urgent need to send a message via one of them to the Danipiur— urgent need, Thastain—and when you find someone who’s willing to carry that message, bring him here to me. Is that clear, Thastain?”

Thastain nodded. But there was an odd look on the boy’s face.