The Doktor's Spyglass

Chapter 23

He was Gerod Tolvaj. Scion of a middling house barely able to claim the distinction of being part of the peerage, Undersheriff in Charge of Special Investigations, Sheriff Orban's right-hand man.

We can't stay here long, came Kantaris's disembodied voice. This one's strong. Eventually he'll realize we're here and kick us out.

He'll—and Thijis realized that he, too, was again disembodied, or embodied in Tolvaj, or something in between the too, and that he could still communicate with Kantaris. He'll realize we're here? Then what the fuck are we doing here?

Not in the way you mean, said Kantaris. He'll realize it on a more fundamentally level—a University psychoanalyst might call it his subconscious. The part of his mind that works in the background, the part beneath his conscious mind. It guards his mind's environs just as yours does, and it will push us out eventually.

How long?

Time is difficult here, replied the old man, but we have long enough to rifle through some of his memories, I'd say.

How are you doing this? Thijis felt like he'd asked the question a dozen times that day—and he probably had.

We definitely don't have the time for a master class in phirotic transiopathy. Suffice it to say that all consciousness makes...an impression on the Phiros. Some make greater impressions than others. A man like Tolvaj makes a great big one. Just as his subconscious is stronger than that of most—not all can expel intruders in the way I said—his presence in the Phiros is greater. It is a boon and a disadvantage. A boon because he will benefit from the phirotic influence in many ways—a more advance intuition, a stronger sense of self, for instance—but a disadvantage in that he is more open to attack by other practitioners.

So he's...some kind of sorcerer? Thijis asked. He felt a strange ripple in response; it took him a moment to identify it as the mental equivalent of a chuckle.

No, said Kantaris. He is simply strong-minded. Your own mindrealm is just as large as his.

I was hoping for bigger, sent Thijis.

No doubt, said Kantaris. But there is more to power than size, Mr. Thijis. Now. You have already felt his mind, yes?

If you mean feeling like I'm coated in a scum of Tolvaj, then yes.

Yes, that's it. We're going to go deeper, and I'm going drive us forward, and we're going to see what we can see.

I don't really—

But then the Tolvaj feeling came back, even stronger, and the nothingness coalesced into something real.

* * *

Orban's fat bulk managed to make the enormous doorway leading into the Lord Protector's study look modestly sized. Tolvaj followed, suppressing a sneer of disgust with practiced discipline. If he hadn't known the old man for a cunning politician, he might have taken his corpulence as evidence of a softness of character. Orban certainly indulged his carnal cravings—on every level—freely enough. But there was an intelligence in his small, black eyes that belied his slovenly exterior. A testament to the value of a second glance, was Orban; learning what the Sheriff of Oridos was really like had only strengthened Tolvaj's determination never to underestimate a man.