And further still when Drakh was laid in a comfortable crotch and a maid brought warm drink. Passing him a huskful, Twig said dryly, “In case you’re superstitious about fire, it’s untouched by flame. We keep the bags in a hot spring.”
Jing’s people cared little about fire one way or the other, so he forbore to reply. Whatever its nature, the drink effectively drove away dreams. Meanwhile Twig was inspecting Drakh’s licker and saying in disgust, “This should have been changed days ago! Here!”—to the maid—”take it away and bring one of my own at once. They’re of the same stock,” he added to Jing, “though here we have fewer outlandish poisons they can learn to cope with. Faugh! They do stink, though, don’t they, at that stage?”
Now that Jing’s perceptions were renewed, he had realized that the very air inside the castle stank—something to do with the hot springs, possibly. Never mind. He posed a key question.
“Drakh will live, yes?”
“I’m not a specialist in foreign sicknesses, you know! But … Yes, very probably. I’ll send for juice which can be poured between his mandibles. Wouldn’t care to offer him solid food in his condition.”
Jing nodded sober agreement. Reflex might make him bite off his own limbs.
“Are those your maps?” Twig went on, indicating the rolled parchments. “How I want to examine them! But you must be hungry. Come on. I’ll show you to the hall.”
There, at its very center, the true antiquity of the castle was revealed. Despite the dense clusters of glowplants which draped the walls, Jing could discern how the ever-swelling boles of its constituent bravetrees had lifted many huge rocks to four or five tunes his own height. Some of them leaned dangerously inward where the trunks arched together. None of the company, however, seemed to be worrying about what might happen if they tumbled down. Perhaps there were no quakes in this frozen zone; the land might stiffen here, as water did, the year around. Yet it was so warm…
He postponed such mysteries in order to take in his surroundings.
The body of the hall was set with carefully tended trencher-stumps, many more than sufficed for the diners, who were three or at most four score in number. Not only were the stumps plumper than any Jing had seen in Forb; they were plentifully garnished with fruit and fungi and strips of meat and fish, while a channel of hollow stems ran past them full of the same liquor Twig had given him. Entrances were at east and west. At the south end a line of peasants waited for their dole: a slice of trencher-wood nipped off by a contemptuous kitchener and a clawful of what had been dismissed by diners at the north. Jing repressed a gasp. Never, even in Ntah, had he seen such lavish hospitality. It was a wonder that the Count’s enemies in Forb had not already marched to deprive him of his riches.
“So many peasants isn’t usual,” murmured Twig.
“I believe well!” Jing exclaimed. “Plainly did I see villages with land enough and many high barns!”
“Except that on the land the trencher-plants are failing,” Twig said, still softly. “Take one of these and transplant it outside, and it turns rotten-yellow. But save your questions until you’ve fed, or you’ll spend a dream-haunted night. Come this way.”
Jing complied, completing his survey of the hall. In a space at the center, children as yet unable to raise themselves upright were playing with a litter of baby canifangs, whose claws were already sharp. Now and then that led to squalling, whereupon a nursh would run to the defense of its charge, mutely seeking a grin of approval from the fathers who sat to left and right. Each had a female companion, and if the latter were in bud made great show of providing for her, but otherwise merely allowed her to bite off a few scraps.
And at the north end sat the Count himself, flanked by two girls, both pretty in the plump northern manner, but neither budding.
The Count was as unlike what Jing had been led to expect as was his castle. He had been convinced by the doctor that he was to meet a great patron of learning, more concerned with wisdom than material wealth. What he saw was a gross figure so far gone in self-indulgence that he required a sitting-pit, whose only concession to stylish behavior was that instead of biting off his trencher-wood he slashed it with a blade the like of which Jing had never seen, made from some dark but shiny and very sharp substance.