the servant.
Moriana set her empty goblet back on the tray held by the immobile servant, saying, 'I'm ready.'
Teom led them through a door in the northwest corner of the Palace. Inside was cool and dim. They passed down a narrow corridor toward a shine of lamplight and a low murmur of conversation.
A stentorian whoop of joy echoed around a large chamber as they entered. Magister Banshau stood before them, his garish garments mercifully hidden under a white smock, holding his hands above his head and performing a dancing bear two-step of glee. He saw them and uttered another joyous bellow.
'Your Imperiousness! I have suceeded! I, the Magister Zolscher Banshau, now assume my undoubted rightful place among the greatest of Wirixer mages!' And he seized Teom by the arm and waltzed him around the room.
A few old men in robes who sat crosslegged in a semi-circle on the floor looked up reprovingly at the commotion, then went back to reading in droning monotones. Fost spared them barely a glance; even the bizarre spectacle of the Emperor of High Medurim practically swept off his feet by a balloon-shaped wizard couldn't compete for his attention with the beast occupying the center of the room.
It was huge, the size of the Jorean mammoth and more, sporting a featureless hump, corpse-white and touched with blue-gray near its base. It lay in a pool of horribly bubbling brown, viscous liquids. The wrinkled, robed men were arranged around the pit, and they appeared to be reading to it.
'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.
