from unattractive. The breasts hanging above the high waist of her blue gown were ample without being ostentatious, and the gown's gauzy fabric was drawn taut by her position poised on the throne arm, revealing a pleasing curve of hip and thigh. Her left hand toyed with the ringlets framing Teom's face, while her shoulder rose and fell in a gentle motion.
Fost held his breath when he realized what she did to her brother. Teom's eyes were shut and he sighed in pleasure. Fost felt Temalla's eyes burning into his. Moriana tensed at his side.
'You are welcome to High Medurim,' the Emperor repeated breathlessly, 'though I'm afraid it was a bit unorthodox.' It had been that, Fost thought, looking everywhere but at Teom's lap, his sister's smiling face, Gyras's hot glare and the narrowing of Moriana's eyes. He wound up gazing down at his feet. The sight of his boots among the mad geometric patterns of the carpet intensified his unease.
Teom stiffened, then sighed. Temalla's smile broadened. Un-speaking, she promised Fost unspeakable delights. Sweat poured down the inside of Fost's tunic. He was very glad its hem came down below crotch level. Teom's eyes opened.
'I apologize for the furtive way you were brought to the Palace,' he said, as if nothing had happened. 'Given the sensitive nature of your mission – Magister Banshau gave us a somewhat garbled account by means of that mystical communication Wirixer mages use – we thought it best your arrival be kept secret for the moment.'
'We are most grateful that Your Effulgence chose to receive us as promptly as you did,' said Moriana. 'Now, if we could get down to the matters I've come to discuss.'
'No, dear Princess!' Teom cried, holding up his hand. 'We have ordered an extraordinary session of the Assembly for the day after tomorrow to hear your proposals. Time enough then for me to hear what you've come to say.'
'So much for secrecy,' muttered Fost. Gyras looked as if he'd just found a family of dung lizards nesting in his beard.
'Time enough to send these beggars packing, Your Magnificence,' Gyras said in a voice like two stones grinding together.
'Gyras,' chided Temalla, 'where's your hospitality?' She jumped to her feet and stretched with a litheness belying her years. 'Personally, I'm looking forward to entertaining our visitors.' She looked directly at Fost. 'Will you excuse me? I'm late for my riding lesson.' She glided out, licking her fingers.
'Good Gyras,' said Teom, rising, 'we thank you for your attendance on our person.' At this formal dismissal, Gyras folded his hands across the front of his frayed gray robe, looked plague and poison at Fost and Moriana, then followed the Empress out. 'Now, my friends,' Teom said. The words trembled with barely suppressed excitement. 'I should like to show you my great Project. It was to complete this Project that I imported Magister Banshau to High Medurim. And once you behold with your own eyes what the Magister's science has made possible, I believe you shall understand the extravagant reception we gave him!'
'And here on the right,' the Emperor waved his hand so that the fingertips protruded ever so briefly outside the shade cast by the parasol, 'we have spider monkeys from the Northern Continent. Careful, there, good Erimenes! If you regard them too obviously they tend to become excited. And they fling handfuls of dung with fearful accuracy.' He chuckled indulgently at the quaint proclivities of his pets. Erimenes recoiled.
'Why do you care if they pelt you with offal?' demanded Ziore. 'They couldn't possibly hit you.'
'It is beneath the dignity of an Athalar scholar to be bombarded with excrement by members of inferior species. Besides, what if one of the little monsters drops a ringer in my jar?' He shuddered and turned his aquiline profile away from the monkeys' wizened, curious black faces.
'On the left are more exotic specimens. Lizard monkeys from the Isles of the Sun.' Fost peered at them with interest. Though shaped like the mammalian monkeys across the gravel walkway, the lizard monkeys were obviously reptilian. Their skins were scaly green, their eyes flittering black beads, and tiny hands and feet three- clawed. Their bellies were yellow, as were the ruffs of skin around the necks of the males. They had prehensile tails, several hanging upside down regarding the humans with sprightly curiosity.
Moriana shuddered and turned away. No doubt they reminded her of the Zr'gsz. Fost thought they were cute, but as he reflected on it, they began to make him uneasy. In the Library of High Medurim he had once read that many savants, including Wirixer genetic magicians, believed humanity had evolved from monkeys not dissimilar to those penned on the right side of the walkway.
Might not the Zr'gsz…?
He hurried to catch up with Moriana and Teom. The Emperor was as proud as a small boy showing off his famous menagerie. It was indeed impressive. Pens on either side contained small bits of alien environment for the comfort of the imprisoned fauna. He sauntered past tall tanks of some durable crystal filled with water, through which clouds of fishes small and not so small swirled and flashed brilliantly in the evening sunlight.
'Where are the naked dancing girls?' demanded Erimenes in a petulant whisper. 'The orgies in the street, the extravagant displays of wealth? I am sorely disappointed in this High Medurim of yours, Fost.'
Fost winced. It wasn't his fault. Still, he had been raised on tales of the opulence of life in the Imperial court. It had been something of a shock when they were ushered into Teom's presence in the private audience chamber and found it so austere. Likewise, Fost wondered at finding Teom attended only by his sister-wife and the dwarf advisor. Where were the coveys of courtiers said to follow him everywhere, panting with eagerness to obey his every whim? He admitted his puzzlement to Erimenes.
'But you did see nude dancing girls, Erimenes,' he pointed out. 'This morning on the pier. They came out to greet Magister Banshau along with the cherubs and savants and that tinny marching band, remember?' 'But they were too far away to see anything.'
As they came back within earshot, Teom was pointing with pride at a shaggy mountain with a tail at both ends and two huge yellow tusks curving from the vicinity of the thicker tail.
'A Jorean mammoth, from Amsi Province in the south. They tame the beasts as dray-animals, I'm told, as we do hornbulls.' He indicated a block of ice melting in the corner behind the listless, hairy giant. 'It's fortunate we have an adequate ice house in the Palace. Otherwise, the poor beast would swelter to death in this frightful heat.' He turned to nod at Fost, his smile mocking.
'Perhaps I had motives beyond secrecy in receiving you so surreptitiously and informally, friend Longstrider. Perhaps I felt a yearning to meet with people who had been to strange places and done wonderful things, and talk with them as people – not as mannikins decked with plumes and ribbons and walled off from all true contact by layer after layer of protocol. And without a flock of gaudy, useless songbirds fluttering about cooing in awe at my every utterance. Their songs are pretty, I confess, but they are also empty.' He reached out and touched Fost fleetingly on the shoulder with his long, soft, pallid fingers. 'Perhaps one day I should like to sit down and hear you tell me about life in my city's streets.' His tone was serious and his eyes were touched with bleakness. Fost almost missed his next words. 'That might be the most alien environment of all, to me.'
Then he laughed and turned away, his robe swirling about his legs. 'And perhaps a man as well-travelled as you should consider how keen must be the hearing of an Emperor to survive Palace intrigues long enough to keep the throne.'
Fost hardly thought of himself as a citizen of Medurim any more. But still… the Emperor had touched him and named him friend. In a way, that was as strange and wonderful as anything befalling him. They came to the end of the rows of enclosure.
'Here's a sentimental favorite of mine,'Teom said. It was a seashore enclosure, a rocky beach and a pool dark with seaweed. Resting with half its bulk in the water was a mottled brown sea toad as big as Magister Banshau and covered with warts. 'It's three hundred years old,' Teom said. 'It sings with a beautiful, high soprano when the moons are full. But mostly I keep it because it reminds me of my dear, departed mother, the Dowager Empress.' He snuffled and wiped his eye. Fost stared. The thing did look like the late Dowager.
'What do you think of my menagerie?' Teom asked. He made a slight hand gesture and a balding servant appeared from nowhere bearing iced goblets and a flask of wine. Erimenes nodded. This was more like it, although the servitor didn't fit his conception of what a servitor should be. Too old, too male.
Fost sipped the cool wine. It was sweetened to the verge of cloying, but refreshing nonetheless.
'It's beautiful, Your Supremacy,' Moriana said. 'But am I correct in assuming it's not the Project you spoke of?'
'Indeed you are, Princess.' Teom had taken no wine himself. 'When you've refreshed yourselves, I will show you the great work whose culmination Magister Banshau has brought about.' He closed the parasol and handed it to
