'It looks,' Erimenes said, tapping his nose judiciously, 'like an enormous mushroom cap.'
'You're right, my excellent Athalar friend!' Banshau released the Emperor and started to grab the genie. He only succeeded in dispersing Erimenes's thin substance. As Erimenes coalesced in a blue whirlwind, the mage grabbed Fost and kissed him wetly on both cheeks. His moustache was redolent of wine and salt fish. 'It is a fungus. But a fungus such as the world has never seen!'
How a new breed of fungus merited such excitement escaped Fost. 'Where is – where is it?' Teom almost danced with excitement.
'There.' Banshau pointed to a door opposite the one through which they'd entered. In a single bound Teom was pulling it open and tumbling inside like a child opening his Equinox presents. Fost followed, careful not to jostle the imperial personage while craning his neck from side to side to see.
The cubicle was bare of furnishings. A small, round man sat crosslegged on the stone floor. His skin was very pale. At the sound of the door, he raised his head. His cheeks swelled in an infectious smile. Colorless eyes surrounded by laugh-lines glowed. 'Your Radiance,' he said, bowing.
'O Oracle!' cried Teom. He fell to his knees. 'This is the greatest moment of my life! My name shall live forever for this!' 'And mine,' added Banshau.
'Oracle?' Erimenes's brow creased. 'I remember the Magister saying something about an Oracle aboard the ship. Who is this Oracle, anyway?'
'I am, honored sir,' said the pale, round man. A pudgy hand pointed past the kneeling Emperor and Fost to the swollen fungus mound. 'And that is the Oracle, as well.' His merry laughter peeled like a bell.
'Many years ago,' the Emperor said around a mouthful of food, 'a certain Wirixer mage was on an expedition to the Isles of the Sun. He gathered specimens himself, since several of his assistants had been killed and eaten as a result of some slight unpleasantness with the Golden Barbarians.' He paused to wet his throat from a goblet of iced water. 'He was wading in a tidepool, whistling to himself. He lost his footing and stopped whistling while he caught his balance – only to hear the last few bars of his tune whistled back at him from nearby.
'On investigating, he found the sound had come from a fist-sized growth at the edge of the pool. A small amphibious predator lived nearby; the fungus imitated the cries of various seabirds and lured them into the creature's reach. In turn, its droppings and the remnants of its meals nourished the fungus. Remarkable symbiotic development.' Temalla made a face at the mention of droppings. She picked a leg of roast fowl from the silver platter and began to tear at it with small, neat teeth, gazing at Fost as if she'd decided to have him for the next course.
'The mage brought the fungus and its partner home. He waited until it produced spores, then went to work. The work was long and exacting, but over generations the Wirixers altered the nature of the fungus. It was found to have a rudimentary consciousness. By selective breeding and the most cogent and subtle genetic enchantments they expanded it until it equalled a man's. And then exceeded it.
'Their aim was to produce a variety of the mimic fungus that could store information, sort of within its own, well, mind, and not only produce facts but actually make deductions of its own.'
'But why bother, Your Sublimity?' asked Erimenes. 'You've the Library. It's the greatest in the world. Or was, when I lived.'
'It's the greatest still, though recently it has fallen into neglect. At times, it seems I am the only Medurimin with any interest in abstract knowledge.' He took a bite of the seaweed pod marinated in brandy. 'Be that as it may, the Library possesses over ten million volumes. It contains within its walls virtually the sum total of human knowledge, of history, of nature, of the workings of politics and the Universe. And ninety-nine parts of a hundred is as good as lost. No human intellect can absorb a fraction of it.' He leaned forward. His dark eyes glowed with passion.
'But Oracle's intellect can. For the first time in human history, man can actually make use of the immeasurable trove of facts.'
Fost felt his own pulse race. He remembered his frustrations as a boy under the tutelage of the pedant Ceratith, when he had completed learning how to read and in part appreciated the sheer size of the Library. He had been frustrated to tears when the truth first struck him. To his small-boy mind it had been like being confronted with all the sweets in the world and knowing if he lived to be a thousand he could sample only a paltry few.
'How does Magister Banshau come into this?' asked Moriana. 'I gather he wasn't involved in development of the Oracle himself.' She leaned to the side to let a serving maid refill her goblet. Dusky breasts threatened to pop from the maid's tight, skimpy bodice. At long last beauteous serving girls had made an appearance, to Erimenes's vocal delight.
'You gather correctly, Princess. What Banshau did, and what has earned him all the bounty I can bestow, is discover a new kind of nutrient. It enhances the Oracle's mental energy level so that it is capable of telepathy and projections and similar feats. Mental feats such as flourished in lost Athalau.'
The jolly, white-skinned little man who had been in the room adjoining the fungus solemnly entered and sat quietly beside Moriana. Teom smiled broadly and gestured to the man, saying, 'Tell them about this wonderous accomplishment, Oracle.' The man nodded, then spoke.
'This is similar to the mental magic that flourished in Athalau, what is now termed intrinsic magic as opposed to extrinsic, which involves manipulation of elementals and demons and other forces external to the magician.'
Fost looked at Moriana. She returned a small smile. Then she stiffened a little. Teom laughed. 'Ah, you perceive my little jest.'
'I don't,' said Fost. 'What's wrong?'
'Nothing is wrong, Fost,' said Teom. 'This being you see beside the princess is nothing more than a mental projection created by the fungus.'
'A Wirixer spell,' the little man said. 'I can teach it to you, Highness, since your mind is both powerful and agile.' He laughed at Moriana's thunderstruck expression. 'The Wirixers have been at the game of magic almost as long as your folk, Princess. Do not begrudge them their little abilities.'
While this interchange took place, Erimenes was growing livid, turning gray-blue with the veins standing out at his temples. If he'd been corporeal, Fost would have feared him to be on the brink of apoplexy. Erimenes was far from resigned to the existence of a second Athalar spirit. Oracle's projection struck him as a cheap imitation of himself. It was too much to bear. He was on the point of fulminating when Oracle turned to him, eyes widening.
'Oh! It comes to me now. Your pardon, sir, I have only recently attained consciousness. But you are the spirit of Erimenes? The mighty Athalar philosopher known as "the Ethical"?' Guardedly, Erimenes admitted he was.
'This is marvelous! You are a great man, sir. Your life and works are a part of history. Ah, to think I meet in person a man of such legendary erudition and wisdom.' He clapped his hands together – through one another. Oracle blinked rapidly and said, 'Please forgive me. I haven't learned all the possibilities of projection yet.'
'Pardon me, Your Magnificence,' Fost cut in. 'It's astonishing that Oracle can project his image like that. But I don't see the importance.' Teom waved his fingers airily.
'The projection is a mere trick, a side effect, if you will. You saw the old men sitting around the nutrient pool reading?' Fost nodded. 'Well, now Oracle can absorb knowledge directly from men's brains. Not only can it pick up the accumulated knowledge of a learned man's whole life, but it can read new material as fast as a man's eyes can scan a page. Can you imagine the lifetimes that will save teaching it?'
Having stripped the drumstick to bare bone, Temalla flung it over her shoulder and slumped back in her chair.
'You've grown so tedious, Teom,' she complained. 'All you can talk about is that horrid giant toadstool.'
Teom's fist slammed onto the table, setting goblets dancing. His own crystal goblet jumped off the table to shatter on the floor. 'It is not a giant toadstool. Oracle is the gre
atest achievement in
High Medurim in a thousand years. It is my Oracle who will bring about a renaissance of knowledge and wisdom and make Medurim mighty again.'
Sneering, she yawned ostentatiously and raised her arms above her head, squeezing her shoulder-blades together so that her heavy breasts jutted straight at Fost. Areolas like targets showed clearly through the gown's flimsy fabric.
'You spend all your time with that unnatural thing!' Inch-long lashes batted at Fost; he almost felt the wind. 'I'm sure Sir Fost would never neglect me so.'
He felt as if someone had poured molten wax into his stomach. Damn the woman! Why didn't she leave him alone? And why did she have this effect on him?
'Unnatural?' Teom's voice rose to a shrill scream of outrage. 'Unnatural, you witch? How can you say that about my creation?' 'Because it is. And it's not your creation.'
'I sponsored it. Without my patronage it would never have been completed!'
'But what's it good for?' the Empress shouted. 'Will it fill the Imperial coffers? Can you eat it, drink it, make love to it?' Her lip curled and her voice lowered. 'But knowing you, dear brother, you probably could. And enjoy it!' 'It would make a livelier bedmate than you.'
In the thick of silence, Fost and Moriana rose and murmured excuses which went unheard amid the gathering storm. Scooping up the genies' satchels, they pushed through a group of serving maids that had crowded around to watch. As they began walking rapidly toward their suite, they heard the explosion of a shrewdly hurled crystal decanter against a wall.
No sooner had they entered their chambers and chased out the dewy-eyed blond youth and girl they found already in their bed, than Moriana went to Fost and ripped his shirt open from collar to navel.
Swaying, he put a hand on the wall to steady himself. They were both more drunk than sober. 'What'd you do that for?'
Her hands slid cool and smooth along his ribs. She undulated against him, her breath warm and sweet in his ear.
'The way that slut Temalla's been making eyes at you,' she purred, 'I thought it best to give you something else to think about tonight.'
Moriana kept him occupied until dawn, when they both slipped into an exhausted sleep.
The next morning, they took advantage of their leisure to tour the fabled Imperial Palace. They wandered to and fro along the marble corridors, gazing at paintings hung on the walls and statues standing in silent alcoves. The place had been decorated in early plunder. Whatever hadn't been nailed down or too heavy to move, the Imperial Army had taken from its country of origin. There was no scheme to the collected art. Much of it was dross, much incomparably fine. What impressed Fost was that the collection spanned two continents and almost a hundred centuries.
The sun was high when they drifted into the western courtyard. It was a garden replete with tinkling fountains and divided into nooks and crannies by an ornamental hedge. Fost suggested it had been designed as a trysting ground. That gave Erimenes much satisfaction imagining past activities.
He waved a vaporous arm at a marble statue in a niche as they passed along the grassy path.
'That's what I call art,' he announced. 'Consider the interplay of line and form, consider the dynamics of the poses, the subtle imbalance inherent in the juxtaposition of human form and delphine. And such mastery of expression. Behold the girl's face. Was ever a transport of ecstasy made more concrete? And see how the dolphin smiles at it…'
'Dolphins always look like that,' said Ziore. 'Can you find no pleasure in art that isn't lascivious?'
A puzzled frown creased his face.
'Why, no. Why should I?' Then he brightened and said, 'During my own lifetime it was definitely established that male dolphins were altogether willing to mate with human females. Keeping in mind that this is High Medurim, Moriana, you really ought to consider…'
Fost would have liked to hear Moriana's retort. He never had the chance. Just at that moment they rounded a corner to see Gyras sitting on a bench, huddled head to head with another. As arresting as the dwarf's appearance was, it was the other who brought a gasp from Moriana's lips and made her hand crop to where her sword hung.
Gyras spoke to a Zr'gsz.
The Hisser saw them before Gyras. He came to his feet in a fluid motion, a dazzling white smile splitting his dark green face.
'What have we here?' His voice was a well-modulated baritone, quite human in pronunciation and inflection. 'You must be the Princess Moriana, and you, sir, you'd be Fost Longstrider.' He clasped clawed hands at his breasts and bowed. 'I am honored to meet you.'
He was as tall as Fost, clad in a single garment of shimmering gray cloth that reached down to his sandalled feet. His shoulders were broad, his waist lean. Gyras hurriedly pushed himself off the bench, landing with a thud.
'May I present Zak'zar, Speaker of the People.' Shrewd eyes studied Moriana. 'I take it you've not met?'
Moriana's lips moved but no words emerged. 'No, we haven't,' Fost supplied. The words ripped at his throat.
'But he's an enemy!' Erimenes shrieked. 'How can you welcome this viper into your nest?' Zak'zar bowed again.
'And you would be Erimenes the Ethical. It is a pleasure to meet you, too, sir.'
'I assure you, fellow, the pleasure is entirely yours! Lord Gyras, what does this mean?' Gyras feigned astonishment.
'Surely, you do not think we would convene a debate and hear only one side, especially one as important as this?' Malevolent glee shone in his huge eyes. He raised one eyebrow before saying, 'The revered Speaker arrived the day before you did, my friends. I'm surprised your good friend His Radiance the Emperor neglected to inform you.'
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The languid young officer leaning back in the uncomfortable chair on Fost's left stifled a yawn with the back of his hand. The President of the Assembly was hammering for order to quell a minor riot taking place on the floor.
Ensign Palein Cheidro said to Fost, 'The Guilds oppose going to war with the Hissers. It'd disturb their precious status quo.' He examined the lace at the cuffs of his blue velvet doublet.
The President recognized a nervous cricket of a man from Jav Nihen. Fost didn't even bother listening to a speech he'd heard a dozen times before, reworded but essentially the same in content.
'Why do the Guilds oppose war? They were quick enough to back the Northern Adventure when I was a boy.'
'That was a war conducted safely on foreign soil,' explained the ensign. He smiled a lazy half-lidded smile. 'Until a suicide commando raid landed and burnt a dozen warehouses, that is. Then the Guilds cried to bring home the troops. If you offered them a really safe war against some foe too primitive to strike back at Medurim, they'd jump at it right enough. Think of the fat government contracts.'
'But that large gentleman denounced expansionists,' Ziore said. 'Do you say the Guilds really want a foreign war in spite of that?'
'My dear lady, do you mean to say you actually believe what politicians say in speechs? Oh, my.'
In Fost's youth, the Imperial Life Guards had been a fighting organization of renown. Ensign Cheidro made him wonder if the Life Guards had been devalued along with the money. Painfully thin, cat-elegant, dressed always in outfits that cost a common trooper a year's pay, Ensign Cheidro didn't fit Fost's image of a member of an elite unit.
Whether by coincidence or otherwise, no more invitations to dine in the Emperor's apartments were forthcoming after Fost's chance meeting of the Zr'gsz. On the morning after, the ensign had appeared stating he was to be their guide. That he was also their keeper was left unsaid.
The debate over Moriana's petition to the Empire to declare war on the Fallen Ones had now dragged into its second day. During the long-winded disputes, Fost had come to a grudging liking for the officer, highborn fop or not. Cheidro had wit and used it utterly without regard for place or prestige of each speaker.
'Why do they go on so?' Fost heard Moriana complain. 'I thought they were discussing whether or not to hear that damned lizar
d.'
As if on cue, a small man with impressively broad shoulders bounded to his feet and shouted, 'We won't listen to the snake! We border folk have had enough words. It's time our swords spoke for us!' The men around him rushed to their feet, waving their fists in the air and shouting.
'Assemblymen from the Marches,' Cheidro said in bored tones. 'Excitable fellows.' 'Order!' cried the President, using his gavel freely.
'Up yours, Squilla!' the small Marcher shouted back.
The turmoil grew until a figure rose in the center and climbed from the floor toward the spectator's gallery. Silence fell as the commanding figure leaned forward, hands on the railing.
'Foedan speaks rarely, and never without effect,' said Cheidro. 'This could bode ill if he favors hearing Zak'zar.'
'Assemblymen,' began Foedan in a voice like a bass drum striking up a slow march. 'The question is not whether the Speaker or the princess is right or wrong, it is whether we should hear what Lord Zak'zar has to say in answer to Moriana's request that we make war upon his people. There can be but one answer. In fairness, we must hear him before making so grave a decision.'
Squilla pounded down the tumult greeting the words and called for a voice vote. No roll call was needed. Overwhelmingly, the Assembly voted to permit Zak'zar, Speaker of the People, to plead his case.
Moriana sat staring at Foedan as the vote was called, twisting the hem of her tunic as if it were the Kolnith Assemblyman's neck.
Zak'zar walked out on the floor of the Assembly Hall in silence. The usually rowdy delegates seemed hypnotized by the Hisser. He held all their attention in one clawed hand – and he knew how to wield it.
'I will be brief,' he said. He let the small ripples of comment die before continuing. 'You are asked to go to war with my People.
What have we done to you? We menace no Imperial holding. No resident of any City State has suffered at our hand. What wrong have we done that you would raise hand against us?'
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