“Might be useful, yes. But if you lose that leg, what then? It’s idiotic for you to remain in Stoien. This is a provincial backwater. We have the best doctors in the world at the Castle, and they’ll repair you in short order. As for Dekkeret, I need him here with me. He’s the only one who understands anything about how this Barjazid device actually works.”
“I implore you, my lord—”
“I implore you, Akbalik: save your breath. My mind’s made up. I thank you for all you’ve accomplished here in Stoien. Now get yourself to the Castle with my lady Varaile, and have that leg properly taken care of.”
Prestimion stood. Akbalik rose also, with an effort he was unable to conceal. His injured leg did not want to support him. The Coronal seized him around the shoulders, steadying him as he struggled to find his balance.
From outside, far below, came the sudden sound of sirens. People were yelling in the streets. Akbalik glanced toward the window. A new pillar of black smoke was rising in the city’s southern quarter.
“It gets worse and worse,” Prestimion muttered. He turned to go. “Some day, Akbalik, we’ll look back at these times and chuckle, won’t we? But I wish we could do a little more chuckling right now.”
It was late the next afternoon before Akbalik had any opportunity to speak with Dekkeret. The last time he had seen the young man was in a simple mountain tavern in Khyntor, on a night two years before in early spring, as they sat together over flasks of hot golden wine. That was the night Dekkeret had announced his intention to go to Suvrael. “You judge yourself too harshly,” Akbalik had said then. “There’s no sin so foul that it merits a jaunt in Suvrael.” And he had urged Dekkeret to make a pilgrimage to the Isle instead, if he truly felt a need to cleanse his soul of its stain. “Let the blessed Lady heal your spirit,” Akbalik had told him then. It is foolish to interrupt your career at the Castle, he said, for the long absence that the trip to Suvrael would require.
But Dekkeret had gone to Suvrael anyway; and to the Isle as well, it seemed, if only for the briefest of visits. And his travels did not appear to have done any harm to his burgeoning career after all.
“Do you remember what we agreed,” Dekkeret said, “when we were sitting together in that Khyntor tavern? That you and I would have a happy reunion on the Mount two years hence, is what we said, when I was back from Suvrael. We would go to the games in High Morpin together, is what we promised each other. The two years have come and gone, Akbalik, but we never managed to get to High Morpin.”
“Other matters interfered. I found myself here in Stoien instead at the time we were supposed to be holding our reunion. And you—”
“And I went to the Isle of Sleep, but not as a pilgrim.” Dekkeret laughed. “Can you imagine, Akbalik, how strange my own life seems to me these days? I, who had simply hoped to be a knight of the Castle, and maybe hold some modest ministerial post when I was old—I find myself keeping company with the Coronal and his wife, and with the Lady herself, and drawn into the midst of the most complex and delicate affairs of state—”
“Yes. Rising fast, you are. You’ll be Coronal some day, Dekkeret, mark my words.”
“Me? Don’t be foolish, Akbalik! When all this is over, I’ll be just another knight-initiate again. You’re the one who might be Coronal! Everyone says so, you know. Confalume might have another ten or twelve years to live, and then Lord Prestimion will become Pontifex, and the next Coronal might well be—”
“Stop this nonsense, Dekkeret. Not another word.”
“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. I happen to think that you’d be an entirely plausible person to succeed—”
“Stop it! I’ve never spent a moment thinking about my becoming Coronal and I don’t expect to become Coronal and I don’t want to become Coronal. It’s not going to happen. Just for one thing, I’m the same age as Prestimion exactly. His successor is going to come from your generation, not from mine. But for another—” Akbalik shook his head. “Why are we wasting this much time on anything as idiotic as this? The next Coronal? Let’s do what we can to serve this one!—I’m going to be escorting the Lady Varaile back to the Castle in another few days. You’ll be staying here, advising Lord Prestimion on ways to deal with Barjazid and his mind-gadget, do you know that? I want you to promise me something, Dekkeret.”
“Name it. Anything.”
“That if the Coronal takes it into his head to go off into those jungles looking for Dantirya Sambail despite all I’ve said to him about that, you’ll stand up before him and tell him that that’s an insane thing to be doing, that he absolutely must not do it, that for sake of his wife and his mother and his unborn child, and for the whole world’s sake, for that matter, he has to keep himself far away from the reach of the things that live in that ghastly hothouse of a place. Will you do that, Dekkeret? No matter how angry you make him, no matter what risks to your own career you may run, tell him that. Over and over.”
“Of course. I promise.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment neither one spoke. It had been an awkward conversation through and through, and it seemed now to have hit a wall.
Then Dekkeret said, “May I ask you a personal question, Akbalik?”
“I suppose.”
“It worries me to see you limping around like that. Something really bad must have happened to that leg. You’re in a lot of pain, aren’t you?”
“You sound just like Prestimion. My leg, my leg, my leg! Look, Dekkeret, my leg’s going to be all right. It isn’t going to drop off, or anything. While I was sloshing around in the Stoienzar I got a nasty nip from a miserable little crab, and it got infected, and, yes, it hurts, so I’ve been walking with a cane for a few days. But it’s healing. Another few days and I’ll be fine. All right? Is that enough about my leg? Let’s talk about something cheerful, instead. Your little holiday in Suvrael, for example—”
It was still early in the morning and already the bitter scent of smoke marred the sweet fresh air: the first fire of the day, Prestimion thought. This was the day of Varaile’s departure for the Castle. A seven-floater caravan was lined up in front of the Crystal Pavilion, a regally grand one for Varaile and Akbalik to ride in, four lesser ones for their security escort, and two for their baggage. The sooner Varaile was back in the safe environment of the Castle, high up above the turmoil that appeared to be engulfing so many of the lowland cities, the better. Prestimion hoped he would be back there himself before the new prince—Taradath, they were going to call him, in honor of the lost uncle that the boy would never know—was born.
“I wish you would come with me, Prestimion,” Varaile said, as they emerged from the Pavilion and walked toward the waiting floaters.
“I wish I could. Let me deal with the Procurator, first, and then I will.”
“Are you planning to go into those jungles after him?”
“Akbalik insists that I mustn’t. And who am I to disobey Akbalik’s command?—No, Varaile, I won’t be going in there myself. I want my mother beside me as we reach out to crush Dantirya Sambail, and the Stoienzar is no place for her. So I’ve given in. I tell you, though, it galls me to remain comfortably ensconced here in Stoien while Gialaurys and Septach Melayn and Navigorn are sweating their way through the saw-palm forests looking for—”
She cut him off with a laugh. “Oh, Prestimion, don’t be such a boy! Maybe the Coronals we once read about in The Book of Changes went into the forests and fought terrible battles against the monsters that used to live in them, but that isn’t done any more. Would Lord Confalume have gone thrashing around in a jungle, if he had had a war to fight? Would Lord Prankipin?” She looked at him closely, then. “You won’t go, will you?”
“I’ve just explained to you why I can’t.”
“Can’t doesn’t necessarily mean won’t. You might decide that you don’t really need to have the Lady Therissa at your elbow while the war’s going on. In that case, will you leave her in Stoien city and go into the jungle anyway, on
ce Akbalik and I are far away?”
This was making him uncomfortable. He had no more desire to enter that abomination of a jungle than anyone else. And he understood that a Coronal’s life should not be placed lightly at stake. This was not the civil war, when he had been only a private citizen seeking to overthrow the usurper: he was the anointed and sacred king, now. But to fight a war by proxy at a distance of two thousand miles, while his friends were risking their lives among the swamp-crabs and saw-grass—?
“If somehow it becomes essential for me to go there, absolutely unavoidable, then I will,” Prestimion said finally. “Otherwise, no.” He touched his hand lightly to the front of her body. “Believe me, Varaile, I want to be back at the Castle myself, all in one piece, before Taradath is born. I won’t take any risks except those that I have no choice about taking.” Then, taking her hand in his, he kissed her fingertips and led her toward the floater. “You should be on your way. But where’s Akbalik? He ought to be here by now.”
“That’s him, isn’t it, Prestimion? All the way over there?”
She pointed far across the plaza. A man with a cane, yes. Walking very slowly, pausing now and again to rest and take the weight off his left leg. Prestimion stared balefully toward him. This was a troublesome thing, this infected leg of Akbalik’s. Vroonish wizardry could go only so far; the man needed to be in the hands of the Castle’s best surgeons for this. Akbalik was important to him. Prestimion wondered just how serious this wound of his really was.
“It’s going to take him forever to get here,” Prestimion said. “Why don’t you go into the floater and sit down, Varaile? All this standing around can’t be good for you.” She smiled and entered the car.
Just then something that had been bobbing in and out of Prestimion’s mind for many weeks drifted back into it, something that he had been meaning to ask again and again, without ever quite getting around to it. He peered in after her. “Oh: and one question before you leave, Varaile.—Do you recall, when we were at Inner Temple and I was telling the story of the memory obliteration to my mother and you, I mentioned that the name of the son of Lord Confalume who seized the throne was Korsibar? You seemed very surprised when I said that. Why was that?”
“I had heard the name before. From my father, in his ravings one day. He seemed to think that Confalume was still Coronal, and I told him no, there was a new Coronal now, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, Lord Korsibar.’ ‘No, father,’ I said, ‘the new Coronal is Lord Prestimion, there isn’t any such person as Lord Korsibar.’ I thought it was the madness speaking in him. But then, when you told us that the usurper whose name had been wiped from history by your mages was Korsibar—”
“Yes. I see,” said Prestimion. He felt a sudden shiver of apprehension. “He knew the name. He remembered Korsibar. Can it be, I wonder, that the obliteration is wearing off, that the true past is breaking through?”
That was all he needed right now, he thought. But perhaps only those in the deepest extremity of madness were experiencing such flashbacks; and no one was likely to take what they said very seriously. “My father in his ravings,” as Varaile had just put it. Even so, it was something that he would have to bear in mind. Consult one of his mages about it, he thought: Maundigand-Klimd, or perhaps Heszmon Gorse.
It was a problem for some other time. Akbalik had arrived at last.
He flashed a broad, unconvincing grin. “All ready, are we?” he cried, with a cheeriness that was all too obviously forced.
“Ready and waiting. How’s the leg?” Prestimion asked. He thought it seemed more swollen than it had been the night before. Or was that just an illusion?
“The leg? The leg is fine, my lord. Just a tiny little twinge here and there. Another few days—”
“Yes,” Prestimion said. “Just a tiny little twinge. I think I observed you getting a couple of those tiny little twinges as you were crossing the plaza. Don’t waste any time getting that leg looked at once you’re back at the Castle, eh?” He looked away in an attempt to avoid seeing the enormous difficulty with which Akbalik was entering the floater. “Safe journey!” he called. Varaile and Akbalik waved to him. The vehicle’s rotors began to hum. The other floaters in the caravan were coming now to life also. Prestimion stood in the plaza looking eastward for a long while after the five vehicles had disappeared from sight.
10
“Tell me honestly,” Septach Melayn said, “did you ever expect to see this part of the world again in your life?”
“Why not?” Gialaurys said. They were entering the Kajith Kabulon rain-forest once more, having made the journey southward through Bailemoona and Ketheron and Arvyanda following the same track they had taken two years before. That time, though, they had been Prestimion’s companions on a small exploratory expedition; now they were coming at the head of a great military force. “We serve the Coronal. Prestimion tells us to go here, we go here. He wants us to go there, we go there. If that involves making ten trips to Ketheron the same year, or fifteen to the Valmambra, what should that matter to us?”
Septach Melayn laughed. “A heavy answer to a light question, my friend. I meant only that the world is so big that one never expects to visit the same place twice. Except, of course, going back and forth among the cities of the Mount. But here we are, plodding through the muck of soggy Kajith Kabulon for the second time in three years.”
“I repeat my reply,” said Gialaurys grumpily. “We are here because it is the pleasure of the Coronal Lord Prestimion that we get ourselves down to the Stoienzar, and the shortest way from Castle Mount to the Stoienzar runs through Kajith Kabulon. I fail to see any point to your question. But this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve opened your mouth just to let some noise come out, is it, Septach Melayn?”
“Do you think,” Navigorn said, as much to break the rising tension as for any other reason, “that anyone’s ever lived long enough to see the whole world? I don’t mean just getting from here to the far side of Zimroel: the Coronals all do that when they make their grand processionals. I mean going everywhere, every province, every city, the eastern coast of Alhanroel to the western coast of Zimroel, and from the land around the North Pole down to the bottom end of Suvrael.”
“That would take five hundred years, I think,” said Septach Melayn. “Longer, I suspect, than any of us is likely to live. But see: Prestimion has been Coronal just a short while, and already Gialaurys and I have been deep into the east-country of Alhanroel, and then down south as far as Sippulgar, and now we are to have the great pleasure of visiting the beautiful Stoienzar—”
“You are very irritating today, Septach Melayn,” Gialaurys said. “I will ride in a different floater, I think.”
But he made no move to halt the vehicle and leave it, and they continued onward. The forest canopy grew deeper. This was a green world in here, but for the occasional contrast that the brilliant fungi of the tree trunks provided, mainly scarlet in this part of the forest, occasionally a vivid yellow brighter even than the sulfury yellow of Ketheron. Although it was still only early afternoon, the sun was no longer visible through the tightly interwoven vines that linked the tops of the tall, slender trees flanking the road. The unending downpour’s persistent drumbeat sound was making everyone edgy: a light rain, unvarying in its intensity, but continuing hour after hour without a break.
A long line of floaters stretched behind them. Each one was emblazoned with the Labyrinth symbol of the Pontifex, since officially this was not an army, merely a peacekeeping force engaged in a police action, and—officially speaking, at least—it was under the command of the Pontificate. The whole system of enforcing the law was a matter for the Pontificate. There were no armies on Majipoor, just Pontifical troops charged with keeping the peace. The Coronal had no troops of his own beyond those who served as the Castle guard. The army that Korsibar had sent against Prestimion during the civil war had been a greatly expanded and probably unconstitutional version of the Coronal’s bodyguard; the army that Prestimion had a
ssembled in his successful campaign against the usurper was a volunteer militia.
A constitutional expert, one whose nose was buried all the time in the Synods and Balances and Decretals, would probably have raised some objections to the legality of this brigade, too. Septach Melayn had requisitioned these troops from Vologaz Sar, the Pontifex’s man at the Castle, by presenting him with a decree already signed by himself as High Counsellor and Gialaurys as Grand Admiral, acting in the name of the absent Lord Prestimion, and, for good measure, by Navigorn and Prince Serithorn as well.
“I will have to send this to the Labyrinth for countersigning, of course,” Vologaz Sar had said.
“Yes. By all means please do. But we need to leave for the Stoienzar immediately, and we’ll be collecting troops from the various Pontifical encampments along the way. So if you’ll add your own signature here, giving us authorization to levy troops on a strictly provisional basis pending formal approval by the Pontifex—”
Whereupon Septach Melayn produced a second copy of the decree, identical to the first.
“This is extremely irregular, Septach Melayn!”
“Yes. I rather suppose it is.—You need to sign over here, I think, just above the Pontifical seal, which we have already had engrossed on the document to save you the trouble.”
In return for Vologaz Sar’s cooperation, Septach Melayn had spared him the necessity of providing Pontifical officers to take part in the action against Dantirya Sambail. It would be simpler, he said, if command responsibilities remained concentrated in the hands of the Coronal’s own trusted men. The enormity of the request was too much for the outmaneuvered Vologaz Sar. “Whatever you wish,” he muttered, abandoning all resistance, and scrawled his signature on the sheet.
Now it was the fourth day of their passage through rainy Kajith Kabulon. They had turned off the main highway, which would have taken them to the provincial capital and Prince Thaszthasz’s wickerwork palace once again, and were making their way sluggishly along a spongy-bedded secondary road that ran somewhat to the west. Everything in this part of the rain-forest grew with crazy tropical excessiveness. Thick tangles of spiky purplish moss festooned the trees so heavily that it was hard to understand why they were not choked by it. Angry blotches of crimson lichen clung to every rock; long ropy strands of a swollen blue fungus coiled along the sides of the road like sleeping serpents. The rain was omnipresent.
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