Gialaurys, who, like his predecessor as Grand Admiral of Majipoor had never felt much fondness for travel by water, had a foul time of it almost from the moment the ferry was under way. After the first few plunging moments he shifted about so that he was sitting with his broad back to the porthole, and muttered a series of prayers under his breath, all the while devoutly rubbing with his thumbs two small amulets that he held folded into the palms of his hands.
Septach Melayn showed him little mercy. “Yes, dear man, pray with all your might! For it’s well known that this ferry sinks almost every time it attempts the voyage, and hundreds of lives a week are lost.”
Anger flashed in Gialaurys’s eyes. “Spare me your wit for once, will you?”
“The river does certainly move quickly, though,” said Prestimion, to put an end to the banter. “There can’t be many swifter ones in all the world.”
He felt none of Gialaurys’s queasiness. But their vessel’s velocity here in the upper reaches of the Mount was indisputably startling. It seemed at times as if the ferry were taking a completely vertical path down the mountain. After a while there was a leveling-off, though, and the ferry’s pace grew less alarming. It made stops to discharge passengers and collect new ones at Banglecode of the Inner Cities and Rennosk in the Guardian ring, and then proceeded by a wide westward swing to the next level down. By the time it was among the Free Cities and drawing close to Stee, late that afternoon, the river’s course had flattened so much that its flow seemed almost tranquil.
The towers of Stee now rose up tall before them on both sides of the river. With twilight coming on, the pinkish-gray marble walls of the right bank towers had acquired the bronze hue of the setting sun, and the equally lofty buildings that lined the opposite bank were already shrouded in darkness.
Septach Melayn consulted a glistening map of blue and white tiles inset into the curving side of the ferryboat’s hull. “I see here that there are eleven quays in Stee. Which one shall we take, Prestimion?”
“Does it matter? One’s as good as another, for us.”
“Vildivar, then,” said Septach Melayn. “That’s just this side of the center of town, or so it would seem. The fourth quay from here, it is.”
The ferry, moving now at an unhurried pace, cruised smoothly from slip to slip, discharging a cluster of passengers at each; and in a little while a glowing sign on shore told them that they had arrived at Vildivar Quay. “None too soon,” muttered Gialaurys darkly. His face was three shades more pale than usual, so that the brown bristles of his long dense sideburns stood out like angry bars against his cheeks.
“Come, now!” Septach Melayn cried cheerfully. “Great Stee awaits us!”
It was everyone’s fantasy to visit Stee at least once in his life. When Prestimion was a small boy his father had taken him there, as he had to so many other famous places, and Prestimion, overwhelmed by the sight of those miles of mighty towers, had vowed to return for a longer look when he was older. But then his father’s unexpected death had delivered the duties of Prince of Muldemar to him while he was still quite young, and soon after that his rise to importance among the knights of the Castle had begun, and Prestimion had had little time for pleasure-travel after that. Now, staring at the splendor of Stee through the eyes of a grown man, he was astounded to see that the city looked every bit as awesome to him today as it had when he was a child.
But Vildivar Quay turned out to be not quite as central as Septach Melayn had calculated. The towers flanking the river in this section of the city were industrial factories, and they had begun to close for the day. Workers bound for their homes in the residential districts on the opposite side of the water were streaming aboard the commuter ferries and small passenger-boats that served in lieu of bridges across the immensity of the river. Soon the neighborhood in which they had come ashore would be deserted. “We’ll hire a boatman to take us along to the next quay,” Prestimion decided, and they made their way back down to the water’s edge.
Indeed there was a riverboat waiting in the section of the quay where private craft were allowed to tie up. It was a small, sturdy-looking vessel of the kind known as a trappagasis, made of grease-caulked planks fastened together not with nails but thick black cords of guellum fiber. At bow and stern it bore weatherbeaten figureheads that might once have been representations of sea-dragons. Its captain—most likely its builder, too—was a sleepy-looking old Skandar whose gray-blue fur had faded almost to white. He sat slouchingly in the stern, looking patiently upward at the darkening sky, with his four arms wrapped about his barrel of a chest as though he were thinking of settling in for a nap.
Gialaurys, who was fluent in the Skandar dialect, went to him to speak about booking passage. And returned, after a brief discussion that did not appear to have gone well for him, wearing a very strange expression on his face.
“What is it, Gialaurys?” asked Prestimion. “Is it that he’s not for hire?”
“He tells me, lordship, that it’s unwise to travel downriver at this time of day, because this is the hour when the Coronal Lord Prestimion usually sails upstream in his great yacht toward his palace.”
“The Coronal Lord Prestimion, you say?”
“Indeed. The newly crowned master of the world: none other than the Coronal Lord Prestimion. The Skandar advises me that he has taken up residence of late in Stee, and makes the river journey every night from his friend Count Fisiolo’s palace to his own. There are some evenings, he says, when the Coronal Lord is in exuberant spirits and pleased to hurl purses full of ten-crown pieces to the boatmen that he passes on the way; but on other evenings, when his mood is more somber, the Coronal Lord has been known to order his pilot to ram into any boats that take his fancy the wrong way, and sink them. No one interferes with this, because he is the Coronal, after all. Our Skandar here prefers to wait until Lord Prestimion has gone past before taking on any passengers. For safety’s sake, he says.”
“Ah. The Coronal Lord Prestimion has a palace in Stee?” Prestimion said, bemused. This was all very curious. “Why, I had no idea! And diverts himself at sundown by sinking riverboats at random?—We need to know more about this, I think.”
“In truth we do,” said Septach Melayn.
This time all three of them went down to the quay. Gialaurys once again told the Skandar they wished to engage his services; and when the Skandar threw both his upper arms upward in a gesture of refusal, Septach Melayn drew forth his velvet purse and allowed the glint of silver-hued five-crown pieces to be seen. The boatman stared.
“What’s your usual fare for the journey up to the next quay, fellow?”
“Three crowns fifty weights. But—”
Septach Melayn held up two bright shining coins. “Here we have ten crowns. That is a tripling of your fare, eh? Will that entice you, perhaps?”
Morosely the Skandar said, “And if the Coronal Lord takes it into his head to sink my boat? Just last Twoday he sank Friedrag’s, he did, and three weeks past it was Rhezmegas’s that went down. If he sinks mine, what becomes of my livelihood, then? I’m not young, good sire, and the task of building boats is far too much for me now. Your ten crowns will do me precious little good if I lose my boat.”
Prestimion made a quick sign, just the littlest flick of his fingertips. Septach Melayn jingled his purse again and a heavy silver coin of impressive size, one that made the five-crown pieces look like trifles, dropped into his palm. He held it up. “Do you know what this thing is, friend?”
The Skandar’s eyes grew wide. “A ten-royal piece, is it?”
“Ten royals, yes. One hundred crowns, that is to say. And look: here’s a second one, and a third. No need to build a new trappagasis, eh? You should be able to buy yourself another one, don’t you think, with thirty royals? That’ll be your indemnity, if the Coronal Lord’s in a ship-sinking mood tonight. Well? What do you say, fellow?”
Hoarsely the Skandar replied, “May I see one of those things, lordship?”
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��I’m no lord, fellow, simply a well-to-do merchant come over from Gimkandale town with my friends, here to see the wonders of Stee.—You think the money’s false, do you?”
“Oh, no, lordship, no, no!” A busy fluttering of deprecatory gestures, all four hands touching forehead, came from the Skandar. “It’s only that I’ve never as much as seen a ten-royaler, never once ever in my life! Let alone possessing one. May I have a look? And then I’ll take you where you want to go, sure enough!”
Septach Melayn handed one of the big coins across. The Skandar studied it with awe, as though it were some gem of rare hue: turning it over and over, rubbing his hairy fingers across the faces it bore, the Coronal Lord Confalume on the obverse and the late Pontifex Prankipin on the other side. Then, with a trembling hand, he returned it. “Ten royals! What a sight that is to me, I can hardly tell you! Get in, lordships! Get in, get in!”
When the three of them were aboard, the huge old man rose and pushed out into the stream. But he could not seem to get over having handled a coin of such great value. Again and again he shook his head and stared at the fingers that had handled the shining piece.
As the trappagasis moved out into the river, Prestimion, who like most of the lords of Castle Mount had never had much occasion to handle money, leaned across toward Septach Melayn and murmured, “Tell me, what will one of those coins buy?”
“A tenner? A fine thoroughbred mount, I’d say. Or a few months’ lodging at a decent hostelry, or enough of the good wine of Muldemar to satisfy a year’s thirst, at least. It’s probably as much as our boatman’s able to earn in six or seven months. And probably near as much as this boat of his is worth.”
“Ah,” said Prestimion, struggling to grasp the dimensions of the gulf that separated this Skandar’s existence from his. There were, he was aware, coins of higher denomination even than the tens, a fifty-royal piece and a hundred-royal one also, actually: he had just the other day approved the designs for the whole series of new coins that would soon bear his own visage along with that of the Pontifex Confalume.
One hundred royals, though—represented by a single thick coin that Septach Melayn might be carrying in his purse even now—why, that was an inconceivable fortune for the common folk of the world, who dealt in humble bronze weight-pieces and shiny one-crown coins that contained just a bit of silver much alloyed with copper. The royal-denominated coinage might just as well be the money of some other world, for all the bearing it had on the everyday lives of these people.
It was sobering and instructive for him to contemplate that, in view of all the times he had seen the likes of Dantirya Sambail or Korsibar casually wagering fifty and a hundred royals at a time at the Castle games. There is much I still need to learn, he thought, about this world that has made me its king.
The creaking old trappagasis made its leisurely way downstream, the Skandar, in the stern, now and then putting a hand on the tiller to keep it in mid-channel. The river was inordinately wide and almost sluggish here, though Prestimion knew that matters changed beyond the city, where the great stream shattered against the row of low jagged hills known as the Hand of Lord Spadagas and broke up into a multitude of unimportant riverlets that lost themselves in the lower reaches of the Mount.
“Where shall we go, then, lordships?” the boatman called out to them. “Havilbove Quay’s the next, and then Kanaba, and the one after that’s the Guadeloom Quay.”
“Take us to the center of things, wherever that may be,” replied Prestimion.
And to Septach Melayn he said, “What do you suppose he could have been talking about, this business of Lord Prestimion going out in his yacht and sinking boats? It made no sense to me. These people must surely be aware that Lord Prestimion hasn’t had time yet even to pay an official visit to Stee, and that there’s no likelihood at all that he’d be living here and riding up and down the river by night making trouble for people.”
“Do you think they give much thought to the realities of the Coronal’s life, lordship?” Gialaurys said. “He’s a myth to them, a legendary figure. For all they know, he has the power to be in six places at once.”
Prestimion laughed. “But still—to imagine that the Coronal, even if he were here, would run down ships in the channel just for sport—”
“Trust me in this, my lord. I know more of the common folks’ minds than you ever will. They’ll believe anything and everything about their kings. You have no idea how remote from their lives you are in every way, living far above them atop the Mount as you do. Nor can you imagine what wild fables and fantasies they spin about you.”
“This is something other than a fable, Gialaurys,” said Septach Melayn impatiently. “This is simply a delusion. Don’t you see that the old man’s as mad as all those people you saw laughing to themselves in Kharax? Solemnly telling us that the new Coronal goes about sinking riverboats! Why, what can that be, if not one more example of this new insanity that’s spreading through the populace like a plague?”
“Yes,” Gialaurys said. “I think you’re right. Madness. Delusion. The man doesn’t seem stupid. So he must be crazy, then, and no question about it.”
“A most peculiar delusion, though,” said Prestimion. “Comic, in its way, of course. And yet I would have hoped they’d have had more love for me than to suppose me capable of—”
Just then came a sharp cry from the boatman. “Look, my lords, look!” He was pointing frantically forward with all four arms. “There! Just upstream from us!”
A disturbance of some kind, not at all imaginary, was quite definitely going on up ahead.
The river was churning with activity. Ferries and riverboats of all sizes were scurrying busily about, cutting toward one shore or the other at sharp angles as if making hasty alterations to their routes. And it was possible to see, a little farther on, a large and luxurious vessel—a ship of virtually regal grandeur—making passage toward them down the center of the channel with all its lights ablaze.
“It is the Coronal Lord Prestimion, come to sink my boat!” the Skandar moaned in a strangled-sounding voice.
This no longer seemed as amusing as it had been. It needed to be investigated. “Steer us toward him,” Prestimion commanded.
“Lordships! No—I beg you—”
“Toward him, yes,” said Gialaurys firmly, and added a couple of rough Skandar expletives.
Still the terrified boatman hesitated, imploring their mercy. Septach Melayn, grinning a broad shameless grin, turned and lifted his hand, showing it agleam with great round ten-royal coins. “For you, fellow, if there’s any trouble! Full indemnity for your losses! Thirty royals here, do you see? Thirty!”
The poor Skandar looked miserable; but he acceded gloomily and put a couple of his hands to the tiller, and kept the trappagasis on its course.
It was all alone, now, solitary and exposed: the only vessel, other than the yacht of the supposed Lord Prestimion, that still remained in mid-channel. And it was bringing them nearer, moment by moment, to the majestic and overbearing ship that held dominion over this section of the river.
They were very close to it, now. Unsettlingly close; for it would be a very easy business, Prestimion was beginning to realize, for this great ship to pass right over their little boat and grind it to matchsticks, and sail away from the encounter without having felt the slightest tremor.
He was no expert on maritime matters; but it was obvious enough to him that this craft looming up loftily before them in the channel was built on a grand princely scale, the sort of yacht that a Serithorn or an Oljebbin might own. Its hull was fashioned of some black glistening wood bright as burnished steel, and abovedecks it bristled everywhere with a host of fanciful spars and booms and stays and banner-bedecked masts and glowlamps in a dozen colors, and from its bow rose the fanged and gaping head of some imaginary monster of the deep, elaborately carved and vividly painted in scarlet and yellow and purple and green. The whole effect was dazzling, awe-inspiring, just a little frightening.
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As for the flag that it flew, Prestimion saw to his amazement that it was the Coronal’s own sea-going flag, a green starburst on a field of gold.
“Do you see it?” he cried, tugging furiously at Gialaurys’s arm. “That flag—that starburst flag—”
“And there is the Coronal himself, I think,” said Septach Melayn coolly. “Although I had heard that Lord Prestimion was a better-looking man than that; but perhaps it was only rumor.”
Prestimion gazed wonderstruck across the way at the man that claimed to be his very self. He stood proudly on the foredeck of this grand ship clad in robes of the Coronal’s colors, staring out in regal manner into the night.
He looked, indeed, nothing at all like the man whom he pretended to be. He seemed taller than Prestimion, as many men were, and much less sturdy through the shoulders and chest. His hair was a golden brown, not the flat yellow of Prestimion’s, and he wore it in curving waves, not simply and straight, as Prestimion did. His face was fleshy and full and not at all pleasing, the eyebrows too heavy, the nose too sharply hooked. But he bore himself with a prideful kingly stance, his head thrown back and one hand stiffly thrust into the slit of his green velvet surcoat.
Behind him stood a tall slender man in a buff jerkin and flaring red breeches, who perhaps was meant to be this Coronal’s version of Septach Melayn, and on his other side was a heavyset slab-jawed fellow in breeches of Piliplok style, surely intended to represent Gialaurys. Their presence made this bizarre masquerade all the more troublesome; it extended it into new levels of duplicity that destroyed the last trace of Prestimion’s earlier bemusement, and awoke in him something now approaching anger.
Lord Prestimion Page 12
