He gaped and blinked and lowered his head as though the weight of it was suddenly too much for him to carry. Prestimion had never seen him look so utterly dumfounded. For a moment he felt something very close to sympathy for the man.

Hoarsely the Procurator said, "Are you insane, cousin?"

"Far from it. 'The peace was breached. Unlawful deeds were done.

You happen to be without awareness of the sins of which you're guilty, that's all. But that doesn't mean that they weren't committed."

"Ah," said Dantirya Sambail again, without even the most minimal show of comprehension.

"There are wounds on your body, are there not? One here, and one here?" Prestimion touched his left armpit, and then ran his hand along the inside of his other arm from elbow to wrist.

"Yes," said the Procurator grudgingly. "I meant to ask you about-"

"You received those wounds at my hands, when you andI fought on the field of battle."

Dantirya Sambail slowly shook his head. "I don't have any recollection of that. No. No. Such a thing never happened. You are insane, Prestimion. By the Divine! I'm the prisoner of a madman."

"On the contrary, cousin. Everything that I tell you here is true. There were acts of treason; there was strife between us; I barely escaped with my life. Any other Coronal would have sentenced you to death for what you did without hesitating as long as a moment. For some unfathomable reason, perhaps growing out of our kinship, such as it is, I find myself unwilling to do that. But neither can I set you free-at least not without some understanding between us of your unquestioning loyalty henceforth . And would I trust that, even if you gave it?"

Color was coming to Dantirya Sambail's face now, so that his myriad freckles stood out like the fiery marks of some irascible pox. His fingers were curling fretfully in a gesture of frustration and rising anger. An odd growling sound, distant and indistinct, seemed to be coming from the depths of his huge chest. It reminded Prestimion of nothing so much than the growl of the caged krokkotas in the midnight market of Bombifale. But Dantirya Sambail did not speak. Could not, perhaps, just then.

Prestimion went on: "The situation's a very strange one, Dantirya Sambail. You have no knowledge of your crimes, that I know. But you should believe me when I tell you that you are guilty of them nevertheless."

"My memory has been tampered with, is that the story?"

"I'll not respond to that."

"Then it has been. Why was that? How could you dare? Prestimion, Prestimion, Prestimion, do you think you're a god of some sort, and I nothing more than an ant, that you can feel free to hurl me into prison under trumped-up charges, and to meddle with my mind in the bargain ? -But enough of this farce. You want my loyalty? You can have as much of it as you deserve. I've been incredibly patient, Prestimion, all these days or weeks or months, or however long it is that you've had me in this place. Let me out of here, cousin, or there'll be war between us. I have my supporters, you know, and they're not few in number."

"There has already been war between us, cousin. I keep you here to make certain that there never will be again."

"Without trial? Without so much as lodging a charge against me, except this vague mumbling about treason, and crimes against your person?" Dantirya Sambail had recovered his poise, Prestimion saw.

The baffled look was gone from him, and so, too, was the outward show of fury. He had his old terrible calmness back, the calmness that Prestimion knew to hide volcanic forces kept under control by fero- cious inner strength. "Ah, Prestimion, you vex me greatly. I would lose my temper, I think, if not for my certain feeling that you've taken leave of your senses, and that it's folly to be angry with a madman."

A predicament. Prestimion pondered it. Should he tell the Procurator the full truth of the great obliteration? No, no: he would simply be handing Dantirya Sambail an unsheathed blade and telling him to strike.

The tale of what had been done to the world's memory was a secret that must never be revealed.

Nor could he lock Dantirya Sambail up in here indefinitely without bringing him to trial. The Procurator had not been speaking idly when he said he had his supporters. Dantirya Sambail's power spread far and wide over the other continent. Quite conceivably Prestimion might find himself embroiled before long in a second civil war, this one between Zimroel and Alhanroel, if he went on holding the Procurator without explanation in this seemingly arbitrary and even tyrannical way.

But a man lacking all awareness of his crimes could not be brought fairly to justice for committing them. 'That was a puzzle of Prestimion's own making. And he was, he realized, as far from a resolution of it as ever.

The time had come to withdraw, to regroup, to seek the counsel of his friends.

"I had a man who stood by my side to serve me," Dantirya Sambail.

was saying. "Mandralisca was his name. Good and true and loyal, he was. Where is he, Prestimion? I'd like him sent to me, if I am to be kept here longer. He tasted my food for me, you know, to be sure there was no poison in it. I miss his wondrous jollity. Send him to me, Prestimion."

"Yes, and the two of you can sing merry songs together all the night long, is that it?"

It was almost comical to hear Dantirya Sambail calling the poisontaster Mandralisca jolly. Him, that thin-lipped hard-eyed villain, that K spawn of demons, that stark skull-and-crossbones of a man?

But Prestimion had no intention of bringing those two scorpions together. Mandralisca too had played an evil role at Thegomar Edge, and had been hauled in, wounded and a prisoner, spewing venom with every breath, after engaging Abrigant in a duel. He was in another cell, much less pleasant than Dantirya Sambail's, in another part of the tunnels . And there he would stay.

This conversation was leading nowhere. Moving toward the door, Prestimion said, "I bid you farewell, cousin. We'll speak again another time."

The Procurator gaped at him. 'What? What? Did you come here simply to mock me, Prestimion?"

There was that rumbling krokkotas growl again. There was untrammeled rage on Dantirya Sambail's face, though the strange eyes were as soft and gentle as ever within the contorted mask of fury. Coolly Prestimion opened the cell door, stepped through, closed it just as Dantirya Sambail. began to lurch toward him with upraised arms.

"Prestimion!" the Procurator cried, hammering clangorously against the door as it slammed in his face. "Prestimion! Damn you, Prestimion!"

It was rare for any travelers to approach the Castle by the northwestern road, which came up the back side of the Mount by way of the High City of Huine, and thence to the road known as the Stiamot Highway, a wide but poorly maintained thoroughfare, old and rutted, that reached the Castle at the infrequently used Vaisha Gate. The usual way to go was through the gently rising plateau of Bombifale Plain to High Morpin, and up the ten flower-bordered miles of the Grand Calintane Highway to the Castle's main entrance at theDizimaule Plaza.

But someone was definitely coming up the northwestern road today-a little group of vehicles, four of them, moving slowly, with a particularly bizarre one at the head of the procession. That one was a sight of such surpassing strangeness that the young guard captain who had been stuck with the dreary assignment of patrolling the Vaisha Gate station gasped in wonder as it came into view, seven or eight turns below him along the winding road. He stood agog a moment, not believing the evidence of his eyes. A huge flat-bed wagon of strange antique design, it was, so broad it filled the width of Stiamot Highway from one shoulder to the other-and that fluid, rippling wall of light surrounding it on all sides with a cold white pulsing glow-that cargo of dimly glimpsed monsters, half hidden behind that shield of dizzying brightness- The captain of guards at Vaisha Gate was twenty years old, a man of Amblemorn at the foot of Castle Mount. His training had not fitted him for dealing with anything remotely like this. He turned to his subaltern, a boy from Pendiwane in the flatlands of the Glayge Valley. "Who's the officer of the day today?"

'Altbalik."

"Find him, fast. Tell him his presence is required out here."

The boy went sprinting inside. But finding anyone in the virtually infinite maze of the Castle was far from an easy task, even the officer of the day, who was supposed to make himself readily accessible. Some thirty minutes went by before the boy returned, Akbalik in tow. By then the flat-bed wagon had pulled up in the spacious gravel-strewn tract in front of the gate; the three floaters that had accompanied it in its journey up the Mount were parked beside it; and the captain of guards from Amblemorn found himself in the extraordinary situation of standing with drawn sword against no less a figure than the formidable warrior Gialaurys, Grand Admiral of the Realm. Half a dozen grim-faced men, Gialaurys's companions, were arrayed just behind him, frozen into positions of imminent attack.

Akbalik, the nephew of Prince Serithorn and a man much respected for his common sense and steady nature, took the scene in quickly. With no more than a single startled blink at the cargo of the wagon he said in a crisp voice to the guard captain, "You can put your weapon down, Mibikihur. Don't you recognize the Admiral Gialaurys?"

"Everyone knows the lord Gialaurys, sir. But lookat what he's got with him! He has no permit to bring wild animals into the Castle. Even the lord Gialaurys needs a permit before he can drive a wagonload of things like this inside!"

Akbalik's cool gray eyes surveyed the wagon. He had never seen a vehicle so big. Nor had he seen, ever before, such creatures as were being transported in it.

It was difficult to make them out, for they were constrained from leaving the wagon by some kind of bright curtain of energy that completely encircled it-a curtain that was like a sheet of lightning rising from the ground, but lightning that stayed and stayed and stayed. It seemed to Akbalik that lesser energy-walls within the wagon divided the creatures one from another. And those creatures-those revolting, hideous monsters!Gialaurys seemed in high fury. He stood with clenched fists, his greatmuscled arms rippling with barely contained strength, and the look of rage on his face could have melted rock. "Where is Septach Melayn, Akbalik? I sent word ahead for him to meet me at the gate! Why are you here, and not him?"

Imperturbably Akbalik said, "I came because I was summoned by a guardsman, Gialaurys. A truckload of weird monsters was coming up the highway to the Castle I was told, and these men here hadn't been given any instructions to expect such a thing, and they wanted to know what to do. -By the Lady, Gialaurys, what are these beasts?"

"Pets to amuse his lordship," Gialaurys said. "I captured them for him out Kharax way. More than that is of no immediate to concern to you or anyone else. -Septach Melayn was supposed to receive me here! This cargo of mine needs to be properly stowed, and I charged him with the task of arranging it. I ask you again, Akbalik, where is Septach Melayn?"

"Septach Melayn is here," came the light, easy voice of the swordsman , appearing just then at the Castle's gate. "Your message was a little slow getting to me, Gialaurys, and by error I came by way of Spurifon Parapet, which took me somewhat out of the way." Languidly he strolled through the gate and gave Gialaurys a quick, affectionate tap on the shoulder by way of welcome. Then he stared into the wagon. "These are what were running loose in Kharax?" he said, in a voice congested with astonishment. "These, Gialaurys?"

"These, yes. Hundreds of them. Running free all over Kharax Plain. It was a bloody terrible task, my friend, tracking those creatures down and slaughtering them. Our Coronal owes me something for it. -But do you have a place ready for these fellows, Septach Melayn? A very secure place? They are some samples of what I encountered there."

have one, yes. In the royal stables, it is. Will this wagon of yours pass through the gate, though?"

"Through this one, yes. Not through the Dizimaule, which is why I arrived at this side of the Castle." Gialaurys turned to his men. "Here, now! Get that wagon moving! Into the Castle with it, now! Into the Castle!"

It took an hour to convey the creatures to the hold that Septach Melayn had prepared for them and to settle them in each in its own cage, safely 10 d away behind sturdy bars that would not be easily sundered.

Septach Melayn had found a disused wing of the Castle stables: a great stone barn deep down beneath the ancient Tower of Trumpets that must have been employed for housing royal mounts a thousand or two years ago, in Lord Spurifon's time, or Lord Scaul's, when this part of the Castle was more frequently used than it had been of late. Craftsmen working with great speed had transformed it under Septach Melayn's direction into a receiving chamber for Gialaurys's pleasant specimens.

When the job was done, Gialaurys; and Septach Melayn dismissed Akbalik and the others who had helped them with the work. Just the two of them remained behind. Septach Melayn said, staring in wonder and horror at the baleful things pacing and snorting within their cages, "How would we have fared in the war, I'd like to know, if Korsibar had succeeded in turning such atrocities as these loose against us?"

"You can thank the Divine that he never did. Perhaps even Korsibar had wisdom enough to know that once they were set free to attack us, they'd continue on through the world, a menace to everyone ever after."

Korsibar? Wisdom?"

'Well, there is that point," Septach Melayn conceded. "But what held him back from using them, then? I suppose it was that the war came to an end before he could." He peered into the cages and shuddered.

"Foh! How they stink, these beasts of yours! What a pack of monstrosities!"

"You should have seen them when they were wandering about all over Kharax Plain. Wherever your eye came to rest there was something hideous to behold, snarling at something even more hideous.

Like a scene out of your worst nightmare, it was. A lucky thing for us that the plain is closed on three sides by granite hills, so that we were able to drive them into a trap, and even get them to set upon one another, while we were picking them off at the edges."

"You killed them all, I hope?"

"All the loose ones, one by one, until none remained," said Gialaurys.

"Except these, which I brought back as souvenirs for Prestimion. But there are hundreds more still in their pens that never broke free. The keepers have no idea what they are, you know. Having no memory of Korsibar, or of the war, how could they? All they understood was that out there in Kharax-and a gray ugly place Kharax is, too, my friend, not a tree for miles-there was this huge pen of horrors, which are supposed to be kept under guard, only something went wrong and some of them got out. Do you want to hear their names?"

"The names of the keepers?" Septach Melayn asked.

"Of the animals," said Gialaurys. "They do have names, you know. I suppose Prestimion will want to know them." He drew from his tunic a dirty, folded scrap of paper, which he pondered in a laborious way, reading not being one of Gialaurys's great skills. "Yes. This one here"--he indicated a long white bony thing like a serpent made of a string of razor-sharp sickles welded together, that lay writhing and fiercely hissing in the cage on the far left-"this one's a zytoon. And this, with the pink baggy body and all those legs and red eyes and that disgusting hairy tail with the black stingers in it, that's the malorn. Behind it we have the vourhain7-that was a green, pustulent-looking bear-like creature with curving tusks as long as swords-"and thenthe zeil, the minmollitor , the kassai-no, that's the kassai, with the crab-legs, and that one's the zeil-and can you make out the weyhant back there, the one with the mouth so big it could swallow three Skandars at once-"

Gialaurys spat. "Oh, Korsibar! You should be killed all over again for having even dreamed of letting these things loose against us. And we should find the wizards who made them and eradicate them also."

Turning away with a grimace from the caged monsters, Gialaurys sai 'Tell me, Septach Melayn, what new and interesting things have happened at the Castle while I was off among the zeils and the vourhains?"

'Well," said the swordsman, grinning wickedly, "the Su-Suheris is new and interesting, I suppose."

Gialaurys gave him a perplexed look. 'What Su-Suheris do you mean?"

"Maundigand-Klimd is his name. We met him, Prestimion and I, in the midnight market of Bombifale. Or, rather, he met us: saw through our disguises, walked right up to us, greeted us for who we really were. Once more the wicked grin. "It will amuse you to learn that he's Prestimion's new court magus."

"He's what? A Su-Suheris, you say? I thought Heszmon Gorse was to be head magus here."

"Heszmon Gorse goes back shortly to Triggoin, where he'll rule over the wizards there as adjutant to his father, and eventually succeed him. No, Gialaurys, this Su-Suheris has been awarded the job at court.

He impressed himself upon the Coronal at once, that night in Bombifale market. Was summoned to the Castle, a day or two later, at Prestimion's express order. And now they are fast friends. It's not just that he's a master of his arts, although evidently he is. Prestimion is captivated by him; loves him as he loved Duke Svor, I think. It's plain, Gialaurys, he needs someone about him that has a darker soul than yours or mine.

And has found one now."

"But a Su-Suheris-" Gialaurys threw up his hands in bewilderment.

'To have those two repellent snaky heads looking down at you all the time-those cold eyes-! And the treacherous nature of the race, there's a consideration too, Septach Melayn! How can Prestimion have forgotten Sanibak-Thastimoon so quickly?"

"I must tell you," the swordsman said, "that this one is a different pot of ghessl from Sanibak-Thastimoon. There was the reek of evil about that other one. It came boiling up from his pallid skin like a noxious fume. This man is steady and straightforward. Dark he is within, yes, I suppose, and very sinister to behold; but that's the nature of his kind.

Still, one is tempted to put one's trust in him. Why, he even shows Prestimion the secret of his geomantic spells."

"Does he? Can that be so?"

"Yes, and makes it seem so mathematical and pure that even Prestimion is impressed, skeptical of mind though the Coronal is, beneath all his pretended acceptance of sorcery. I, too, as a matter of fact must admit that I-"

"A Su-Suheris in the inner circle," Gialaurys said, grumbling. "I like this very little, Septach Melayn."

"Meet the man, first, and judge him afterward. You'll sing a different tune." But then Septach Melayn frowned and said, taking his sword from its sheath and drawing its tip in a thoughtful way across the earthen floor of the old stable, making idle patterns that were something like the mystic symbols of the geomancers of his native city of Tidias, "There is, I must say, one bit of advice he's given Prestimion already that makes me a trifle uneasy. They were speaking yesterday , Prestimion and Maundigand-Klimd, of the problem of Dantirya Sambail; and the magus came forth with the idea of restoring the Procurator's memories of the war."

Gialaurys started at that.

To which," continued Septach Melayn, sweeping serenely onward, the Coronal responded quite favorably, saying, yes, yes, that might very likely be the right thing to do."

"By the Lady!" Gialaurys howled, throwing up his hands and making half a dozen holy signs in one feverish blur of incantation. "I leave the Castle for just a few weeks, and madness instantly takes root in it!

Restore the Procurator's memories? Prestimion's gone unhinged!

'This wizard must have sprung him entirely free of his wits!"

"Do you think so, now?" came the Coronal's voice just then, echoing across the huge stables toward them from the rear of the room.

Prestimion stood by the entrance, beckoning. "Well, Gialaurys, come close, and look me in the eye! Do you see any vestige of lunacy lurking in my gaze? Come, Gialaurys! Come, let me embrace you and welcome you back to the Castle, and tell me whether you still think I've gone mad."

Gialaurys went toward him. He saw now the Su-Suheris, looming behind the Coronal: a towering formidable figure in the richly brocaded purple robes, shot through with bright golden threads, of a magus of the court. His long, forking white neck and the two hairless elongated heads that it bore rose above his heavy, jewel-encrusted collar like an eerily carved column of ice. Gialaurys, with a quick hostile glance at the alien, opened his arms to Prestimion, and held the smaller man tightly for a long moment.

'Well?" Prestimion said, stepping back. "What do you say? Am I a madman , do you think, or is this the Prestimion you knew before you went off to Kharax?"

"You speak of restoring Dantirya Sambail's memories of the war, I hear," Gialaurys said. "That seems very like madness to me, Prestimion."

And glanced sullenly, again, at the Su-Suheris.

"Seems like madness, perhaps, but whether it is is yet to be determined , I think," said Prestimion. The Coronal paused and sniffed and made a face. -"What a fetid offensive stench this place has! It's these pretty animals of yours, I suppose. You must show them to me in a moment or two." 'Then his face took on an easier look. "But introductions are in order, first." The Coronal indicated his companion. "This is our newly appointed magus of the court, Gialaurys. Maundigand-Klimd's his name. I assure you he's made himself more than useful already." And to the Su-Suheris he said, "And this is our famous Grand Admiral, Gialaurys of Piliplok. Though surely you must know that already, Maundigand-Klimd."

'The Su-Suheris smiled with the left head, nodded with the right one.

"In truth I did, lordship."

Prestimion said, "We'll talk of Dantirya. Sambail later, Gialaurys. But the simple essence of the thing, I tell you now, is the issue we've discussed before amongst us-our inability to put a man on trial for crimes that he can't remember, that indeed no one in the world knows anything about save us. Who is to stand up in court as his accuser? And how, once accused, can he plead his cause? Even a murderer's entitled to defend himself. Then, how can he repent, once we find him guilty?

'There's no repentance when there's no cognizance of guilt."

"We already know of these problems, Prestimion," said Gialaurys.

"So we do. But we've found no solution to them. Now Maundigand-Klimd proposes that we put a counterspell on him that undoes the obliteration , so that we can try him while he's in full consciousness of his deeds. And then, afterward, wipe his memory clean again. -But, as I say, we'll talk of all that later. Show me your precious lovely creatures, now.

"Yes," Gialaurys; said. "Yes, I will," but made no move toward the cages. Something else had belatedly occurred to him. After a little pause he said, in the bleak, ponderous way by which he communicated high displeasure, "It seems evident from what you tell me, my lord, that your new magus has been made privy to knowledge of theobliteration.

Which, as I understood our compact, was not to be made known to anyone , not to anyone at all."

Now it was Prestimion's turn to be silent for a time.

Plainly he was abashed. A touch of ruddiness came to his face, and uneasiness to his eyes. He replied, finally, "Maundigand-Klimd had already worked out the secret for himself, Gialaurys. I merely con- firmed that which he suspected. Technically it was, I agree, a violation of our oath. But in fact-"