Lord Prestimion
Page 6
What reason was there, though, to link any of this to the general amnesia that he had had his sorcerers induce at the end of the war? Perhaps such things inevitably happened at the time of the changing of kings, especially after so long and happy a reign as that of Lord Confalume. People thought of Confalume as being a loving father to the entire world; they were unhappy, perhaps, to see him disappearing into the Labyrinth; and hence these disturbances. Perhaps.
Septach Melayn and Gialaurys were going on and on, extending into a host of new areas the already sufficient list of problems that were awaiting solutions:
He needed, they told him, to integrate the various magical arts, which had come to take on such importance on Majipoor in Confalume’s time, more fully into the fabric of society. This would require conversations with such folk as Gominik Halvor and Heszmon Gorse, who had remained at the Castle for just that purpose, said Gialaurys, rather than return to the wizards’ capital at Triggoin.
He needed also to do something about a horde of synthetically-created monsters that Korsibar had planned to use against him on the battlefield if the war had lasted just a little longer: according to Gialaurys, a number of them had escaped from their pens and were rampaging through some district north of Castle Mount.
Then, too, he ought to deal with some complaint that the Metamorphs of Zimroel had raised, having to do with the boundaries of the forest reservation on which they were required to live. The Shapeshifters were complaining of illegal encroachments on their domain by unscrupulous land-developers out of Ni-moya.
And also there was this to do, and this, and that—
Prestimion was barely listening, now.
They were so insufferably sincere, these two, Septach Melayn in his elegant knightly way, Gialaurys in his own blunter style. Septach Melayn had always posed as one who never took anything seriously, but it was, Prestimion knew, only a pose; and as for Gialaurys, he was nothing else but stolid seriousness, a great massive sturdy lump of it. Prestimion felt, more keenly than ever, the loss of the slippery little Duke Svor, who had had many faults but never the one of excessive sincerity. He had been the perfect mediator between the other two.
How idiotic it had been of Svor to step out onto the battlefield of Thegomar Edge, when his proper place had been behind the scenes, scheming and plotting! Svor had not been any sort of warrior. What lunacy had driven him to take part in that murderous battle? And now he was gone. Where, Prestimion wondered, will I find a replacement for him?
And for Thismet, also. Especially, especially, Thismet. The biting pain of that loss would not leave him, would not so much as diminish with the passing weeks. Was it Thismet’s death, he wondered, that had cast him into this miserable despondency?
Much work awaited him, yes. Too much, it sometimes seemed. Well, he would manage it somehow. Every Coronal in the long list of his predecessors had faced the same sense of immense responsibilities that had to be mastered, and each had shouldered those responsibilities and played his part, for good or ill, as history related—as history would one day relate also of him. And most of them had done the job reasonably well, all things considered.
But he could not shake off that mysterious, damnable sense of weariness, of hollowness, of letdown and dissatisfaction, that had poisoned his spirit since the first day of his reign. He had hoped that the taking up of his royal duties would cure him of that. It did not seem to be working out that way.
Very likely the tasks before him would seem far less immense, Prestimion thought, if only Thismet had lived. What a wonderful partner of his labors she would have been! A Coronal’s daughter herself, aware of the challenges of the kingship, and doubtless more than capable of handling many of them—Thismet would have been ever so much more capable of governing, he was sure, than her foolish brother: she would gladly have shared a great deal of his burden. But Thismet, too, was lost to him forever.
Still talking, Septach Melayn? And you, Gialaurys?
Prestimion toyed with the slim circlet of bright metal that lay before him on the desk. His “everyday” crown, as he liked to call it, to distinguish it from the exceedingly magnificent formal crown that Lord Confalume had had fashioned for himself, with those three immense many-faceted purple diniabas gleaming in its browband, and its finials of emeralds and rubies, and its inlaid chasings of seven different precious metals.
Confalume had loved to wear that crown; but Prestimion had worn it only once, in the first hours of his reign. He meant to reserve it henceforth for the very highest occasions of state. He found it mildly absurd even to have this little silver band around his head, hard though he had fought for the right to wear it. But he kept it constantly by him, all the same. He was Coronal of Majipoor, after all.
Coronal of Majipoor.
He had set his goal high, and after terrible struggle he had attained it.
As his two dearest friends droned on and on with their seemingly unending recitation of the tasks that awaited him and their interminable discussion of priorities and strategies, Prestimion was no longer even pretending to be paying attention. He knew what his tasks were: all of these, yes, and one that Septach Melayn and Gialaurys had not mentioned. For above all else he must make himself, here at the outset, the master of the officials and courtiers who were the real heart of the government: he must demonstrate his kingliness to them, he must show them that Lord Confalume, with the guidance of the Divine, had chosen the right man for the post.
Which meant that he must think like a Coronal, live like a Coronal, walk like a Coronal, breathe like a Coronal. That was the prime task; and all else would follow inevitably from the doing of it.
Very well, Prestimion: you are Coronal. Be Coronal.
The husk of him remained where it was, behind his desk, pretending to listen as Septach Melayn and Gialaurys earnestly laid out an agenda for the early months of his reign. But his soul flew upward and outward, into the cool open sky above the tip of Castle Mount, and journeyed toward the world, traveling in miraculous simultaneity to all directions of the compass.
He opened himself now to Majipoor and let himself feel its immensity flowing through him. Sent his mind roving outward across the vastness of the world that in these days just past had been entrusted to his care.
He must embrace that vastness fully, he knew, take it into himself, encompass it with his soul.
—The three great continents, sprawling, vast, many-citied Alhanroel and gigantic lush-forested Zimroel and the smaller continent of Suvrael, that sun-blasted land down in the torrid south. The giant surging rivers. The countless species of trees and plants and beasts and birds that filled the world with such beauty and wonder. The blue-green expanse of the Inner Sea with its roving herds of great sea-dragons moving unhurriedly about their mysterious migrations, and the holy Isle of Sleep that lay in its center. The other ocean, the enormous unexplored Great Sea that stretched across the unknown farther hemisphere of the world.
—The marvelous cities, the fifty great ones of the Mount and the uncountable multitude beyond, Sippulgar and Sefarad and Alaisor and wizardly Triggoin, Kikil and Mai and Kimoise, Pivrarch and Lontano, Da and Demigon Glade, and on and on, across to the far shore of the Inner Sea and the distant continent of Zimroel with its multiplicity of ever-burgeoning megalopolises, Ni-moya, Narabal, Til-omon, Pidruid, Dulorn, Sempernond, and all the rest.
—The billions and billions of people, not only the humans but those of the other races, Vroons and Skandars, Su-Suheris and Hjorts and the humble slow-witted Liimen, and also the mysterious shape-shifting Metamorphs, whose world this had been in its entirety until it was taken from them so many thousands of years ago.
All of it now placed in his hands.
His.
His.
The hands of Prestimion of Muldemar, yes: who now was Coronal of Majipoor.
Suddenly Prestimion found himself feverishly yearning to go forth not merely in a vision but in the flesh, and explore this world that had been given into his char
ge. To see it all; to be everywhere at once, drinking in the infinite wonders of Majipoor. Out of the pain and loneliness of his strange new life as Coronal came, in one great turbulent rush, the passionate desire to visit the lands from which those coronation gifts had come. To repay the givers, in a sense, with the gift of himself.
A king must know his kingdom at first hand. Until the time of the civil war, when he had trekked back and forth across Alhanroel from one battlefield to another, his life had been centered almost entirely on Castle Mount, and at the Castle itself. He had been to some of the Fifty Cities, of course; and there had been the one journey to the eastern coast of Zimroel when he was hardly out of boyhood, that time when he had met and fallen into friendship with Gialaurys at Piliplok, but otherwise he had seen little of the world.
The war, though, had given Prestimion an appetite for traveling. It had taken him up and down the heartland of Alhanroel, to cities and places he had never expected to see: he had beheld the astonishing might of the Gulikap Fountain, that uncheckable spume of pure energy, and had crossed the forbidding spine of the Trikkala Mountains into the lovely agricultural zones on the other side, and had impelled himself across the grim dread desert of the Valmambra to reach the remote city of the wizards, Triggoin, far in the north. And yet he had seen only a tiny sliver of the magnificence that was Majipoor.
He longed, abruptly, to experience more. He had not realized, until this moment, how powerful that longing was. The desire seized him and took full possession of him. How much longer could he remain holed up in isolated majesty in the luxurious confines of the Castle, drearily passing one day after another in such matters as interviewing potential members of the Council and reviewing the legislative program that he had been handed by Lord Confalume’s administration, when the whole glorious world beyond these walls beckoned to him, urging him to go forth into it? If he could not have Thismet, well, he would have Majipoor itself to console him for the loss. To see all that it held, to touch, to taste, to smell. To drink deep; to devour. To present himself to his subjects, saying, Look, see, here I am before you, Prestimion your king!
“Enough,” he said suddenly, glancing up and interrupting Septach Melayn in full spate. “If you will, my friends, spare me the rest of it for now.”
Septach Melayn peered down at him from his great height. “Are you all right, Prestimion? You look very strange, suddenly.”
“Strange?”
“Tense. Strained.”
Indifferently Prestimion said, “I’ve slept badly these few nights past.”
“That comes of sleeping alone, my lord,” said Septach Melayn, with a wink and a little sniggering leer.
“No doubt that’s so,” said Prestimion icily. “Another problem to be solved, at another time.” He allowed Septach Melayn to see plainly that he was not amused. Then he said, after a long chilly moment of silence, “The true problem, Septach Melayn, is that I feel a great restlessness churning within me. I’ve felt it since the hour this crown first touched my forehead. The Castle has begun to seem like a prison to me.”
Septach Melayn and Gialaurys exchanged troubled glances.
“Is that so, my lord?” said Septach Melayn cautiously.
“Very much so.”
“You should talk to Dantirya Sambail about what being a prisoner is really like,” Septach Melayn said, giving Prestimion an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
The man is irrepressible, Prestimion thought.
“In due time I will certainly do just that,” he replied unsmilingly. “But I remind you that Dantirya Sambail’s a criminal. I’m a king.”
“Who dwells in the greatest of all castles,” said Gialaurys. “Would you rather be back on the battlefield then, my lord? Sleeping in the rain beneath a bower of vakumba-trees in Moorwath forest? Struggling in the mud by the banks of the Jhelum? Making your way through the swamps of Beldak marsh? Or wandering about deliriously in the desert of Valmambra once more, perhaps?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Gialaurys. You don’t understand what I’m saying. Neither of you do. Is this the Labyrinth, and I the Pontifex, that I’m required to stay in one place forever and ever? The Castle’s not the boundary of my life. These few years past all my efforts have been spent on making myself Coronal; and now I am; and it seems to me now that all I’ve achieved for myself is to make myself the king of documents and meetings. The coronation festivities have come and gone. I sit in this office, grand as it is, day after day, yearning with all my heart to be anywhere else.—My friends, I need to get out into the world for a time.”
In some alarm Septach Melayn said, “Surely you’re not thinking of a grand processional, Prestimion! Not yet! Not in the first month of your reign—nor even the first year, for that matter.”
Prestimion shook his head. “No. It’s much too soon for that, I agree.” What did he want, though? It was far from clear even to himself. Improvising hastily, he said, “Short visits somewhere, perhaps—not a grand processional but a little one, through half a dozen of the Fifty Cities, let’s say—two or three weeks going here and there on the Mount. To bring myself closer to the people, to get to know what’s on their minds. I’ve been too busy in these years of war to pay any attention to anything except raising armies and making battle plans.”
“Yes, certainly, travel to some of the nearby cities. Yes, by all means, do,” said Septach Melayn. “But it’ll take time—weeks, even months—to arrange even the simplest of official journeys. Surely you know that. The arrangements for proper royal accommodations, the programs of events to be drawn up, the receptions, the banquets that must be organized—”
“More banquets,” said Prestimion glumly.
“They are unavoidable, my lord. But I have a better suggestion, if you merely want to escape from the Castle for quick visits to the neighboring cities.”
“And what is that?”
“Korsibar, I’m told, also wanted to travel about on the Mount while he was Coronal. And did so secretly, in disguise, making use of some shapechanging device that the sneaky Vroon wizard Thalnap Zelifor invented for him. You could do the same, taking on this guise or that one, as it pleased you, and no one the wiser.”
Prestimion looked at him dubiously. “I remind you, Septach Melayn, that at this very moment Thalnap Zelifor is on his way to exile in Suvrael, and all of his magical devices have gone with him.”
Frowning, Septach Melayn said, “Ah. In truth I had forgotten that.” But then his eyes brightened. “Yet there’s really no need of such magic, is there? I understand it failed one day for Korsibar anyway, while he was in Sipermit, I think, and he was seen changing to his true semblance. Which gave rise to the silly fable that Korsibar was a Metamorph. If you were to wear a false beard, though, and a kerchief around your head, and dressed yourself in commoner’s clothing—”
“A false beard!” said Prestimion, with a guffaw.
“Yes, and I would go with you, or Gialaurys, or the two of us both, also in disguise, and we’d sneak off to Bibiroon, or Upper Sunbreak, or Banglecode or Greel or wherever it is you want to go, and spend a night or two sniffing around having high sport far from the Castle, and no one would ever know? What do you say to that, Prestimion? Would that ease this restlessness of yours at least a little?”
“I do like the idea,” Prestimion said, feeling a spark of joy rising within his breast for the first time in more weeks than he cared to count. “I like it very much!”
And would gladly have set forth from the Castle that very evening. But no, no, there were more meetings to attend, and proposals to consider, and decrees that must be signed. He had never fully comprehended until now the meaning of the old saying that it was folly to yearn to be the master of the realm, for you would discover in short order that you were in fact its servant.
“Lordship, it is Prince Abrigant of Muldemar to see you,” came the voice of Nilgir Sumanand, who held the post of major-domo to the Coronal now.
“Admit him,” Prestimion said.
Abrigant might more readily have been Septach Melayn’s brother than Prestimion’s, so different in physical type was he. He was slim where Prestimion was stocky, and lanky where Prestimion was short statured, and his hair, though golden like his brother’s, had a sheen and a radiance that Prestimion’s had never had. He cut a fine figure, did Abrigant: dressed this evening as though for a formal public occasion of court, with a tight-fitting, high-waisted pinkish-purple doublet of rich Alaisor make, and soft long-legged breeches of the same color, tucked into high boots of the distinctive yellow leather of Estotilaup that were topped with fine lace ruffles.
He offered his brother not only the starburst gesture but a grand sweeping bow, greatly overdone. Irritatedly Prestimion made a quick brushing motion with his hand, as if to sweep the effusive obeisance away.
“This is a little too much, Abrigant. Much too much!”
“You are Coronal now, Prestimion!”
“Yes. So I am. But you are still my brother. A simple starburst will be sufficient. More than sufficient, indeed.” He began once more to toy with the slender crown lying on his desk. “Septach Melayn tells me you have ideas to put before me. Dealing with, so I understand it, the matter of bringing some relief to the regions currently suffering from crop failures and other such disruptions.”