“It was very difficult,” he said at last. “But I think we have made a start.”
Eagerly she gripped him by one forearm. “Quickly! Tell me everything!”
Farquanor paused a long maddening moment. Then at last he said, “I began by observing to him that everyone here was talking about the Procurator’s remark, that your brother might feel hostility toward Prestimion and any idea that might come from him. To which your brother responded this, lady: that if the meaning of the Procurator’s words was that he felt your brother was inflamed with the desire to be Coronal in Prestimion’s stead, then the Procurator was implying treason to him, which is a dastardly charge that your brother utterly rejects.”
“Indeed,” said Thismet, feeling her spirit sinking within her. “Treason. He used that word. And you said—?”
“I said to him that he himself might not feel that he deserved the throne more than Prestimion, but that there were many others here that did, and that I was proud to say I was among them. That is treason too, said he, and grew very angry.”
“And gave no sign that he might be flattered, as well as angered, by hearing that important people thought that he was worthy of the throne?”
“Not then,” Farquanor said.
“Ah. Not then”
“I said next that I begged his pardon if I had offended him,” Farquanor went on, “and assured him I had no wish whatever to espouse treason, nor the Procurator neither, and most surely not to attribute treasonous thoughts to him. But I asked the good prince your brother to consider that treason is in fact a concept that alters and varies with the circumstances. None would dare call a thing treason, I said, if it were to bring about a worthwhile end. Which made him even more angry, lady. I thought he might strike me.
“I begged him to be calm; I told him again how many there are who believe in his right to have the throne, and that those people felt the succession law is unjust. I spoke of all those famous princes of the past who had been passed over for the Coronal’s seat on account of that law, and named a few. They were great names; I was very eloquent on their behalf and in comparing his virtues with theirs. And gradually I could see him warming to the concept. Toying with it, you might say. Revolving it again and again in his mind as though it were something completely new to him. And finally he said, Yes, Farquanor, many a great prince has had to step aside on account of this custom of ours.’”
“Ah. So he has taken the bait, then. The hook is in him.”
“Perhaps it is, lady.”
“And how was it left between you when you parted from him?”
“You didn’t see? There, at the very end of our talk?”
“I was busy at just that moment speaking with Prince Prestimion.”
A muscle quivered in Farquanor’s fleshless cheek and his eyes betrayed a surge of remembered pain. “I may have moved things along a trifle too swiftly just then, perhaps. I said to him that I was glad to see we were in accord, and that we might profitably hold further discussions on the subject. And also I said that there were those who would be glad to meet with him this afternoon to discuss a course of action leading toward constructive goals.”
Thismet leaned eagerly forward, so close that Farquanor’s nostrils quivered at the fragrance of her breath.
He said, “The prince reacted badly. It was too much too soon, I think, that final remark. A terrible look came into your brother’s eyes, and he reached down and laid his fingertips along both sides of my neck, like this, lady, very lightly, so that from a distance one might think it was but a friendly touch. But I knew from the strength of him and the pressure of his hands against me that all he needed to do was flick his wrists and he’d snap my spine as you would a fish bone, and might well do it. And he said to me that he would have no part in any treason against Prestimion and that I must never speak to him of such things again; and then he sent me from him.”
“And this, you say, is a good start?”
“I think it is, lady.”
“It seems a very bad one to me.”
“He was angered at the end, yes, and angry also in the beginning. But betweentimes he was giving the idea serious consideration. I saw that in him. He goes this way and that, lady: it is his nature.”
“Yes. I know my brother’s nature.”
“The thing is planted in him. He’ll strive to resist its pull, for as we all know the prince your brother is not one for rising up against the established order. But also it pleases him inwardly that others see him as a king. That was something he may not have allowed himself to dare to believe, but when it comes to him from others, that alters the case for him. He can be turned, lady. I’m certain of it. It would be easy enough for you to see that for yourself. You only need go to him; praise him for the kingliness that you see in him; and watch him closely. His face began to shine with a rosy glow when I spoke to him in that fashion. Oh, yes, lady, yes, yes. He can be turned.”
7
On the first day of the Pontifical Games the leaders of the kingdom presented themselves formally at the bedside of the Pontifex, who still hovered between life and death, obstinate in his refusal to pass onward and return to the Source of All Things. It was as though they felt a need to ask his permission to commence the games that were by ancient custom supposed to commemorate his departure from the world.
The dying Pontifex lay with eyes closed, face upward, an almost insignificant figure in the great expanse of the canopied imperial bed. His skin had gone gray. The long lobes of his ears had acquired a pendulous droop. His features were expressionless, as though sealed behind bands of bone. Only by his slow, virtually imperceptible breathing did he indicate in any way that he was still alive, and even that appeared to cease for long moments at a time.
It was time for him to go. Everyone was agreed on that. He was unthinkably ancient, with well over a century of life behind him. Forty-odd years as Pontifex, twenty or so as Coronal before that: it was enough.
Prankipin had been a man of tremendous vigor and physical resilience, romantic and visionary of nature, buoyant and joyous of spirit, famous for the warmth and infectious power of his smile. Even his coins portrayed him smiling that wondrous smile; and he appeared to be smiling now as he lay on his deathbed, as though the muscles of his face had long since forgotten any other expression. The Pontifex seemed oddly youthful too, here in extreme old age. His cheeks and forehead were smooth, almost childlike, all the furrows and corrugations of his long life having vanished in these final weeks.
In the darkened chamber where the old Pontifex lay dying, a luminous hush prevailed. Blue smoke flecked with red sparks coiled upward from tripods in which alien incenses burned, and tables in the shadowy corner of the room were piled high with books of spells and potions and the movements of the stars that the monarch had studied, or had pretended to study. More such volumes lay about him on the floor. A Vroon and a Su-Suheris and a steely-eyed Ghayrog stood sternly beside the bed, unendingly chanting in low soft tones the mysterious incantations that were intended to protect the Pontifex’s departing soul as it made itself ready for its voyage.
Everyone in the inner circles of the government, both at the Castle and in the Labyrinth, knew the names of those three aliens. The Vroon was Sifil Thiando; the Ghayrog, Varimaad Main; the Su-Suheris, Yamin-Dalarad. The three sepulchral-looking beings were the commanders of that immense troop of seers, haruspicators, necromancers, conjurers, and sortilegers that Prankipin had gathered about himself in the final two decades of his reign.
Bedecked with the insignia of their kind, clutching the wands of their art, they held themselves lofty and aloof, clothed in the dark forbidding aura of their own magics, as the members of the Coronal’s party prepared to enter the imperial bedchamber. For many years now these three had guided the aging Pontifex in all his most significant decisions; and in recent times it had become apparent to all that they—and not any of the officials of the Pontifical bureaucracy, nor, perhaps, even the Pontifex himself—were the r
eal figures of authority at the court of the Labyrinth. By their imperious stance and commanding mien they left no doubt of that today.
But the three highest ministers of the Pontifical court were also on hand for the ceremony, clustered grimly to the left of the dying man’s pillow as if standing guard against the trio to the other side: Orwic Sarped, the Minister of External Affairs; Segamor, the Pontifex’s private secretary; and Kai Kanamat, the High Spokesman of the Pontificate. They were a somber-faced and dismal group. Those three had held their posts for immemorial years and were all three aged and withered, with Kai Kanamat the most shriveled of all, a man who gave the appearance of having been mummified while still alive, mere wizened skin stretched across a flimsy armature of fragile bone.
Once they, and not Prankipin’s team of wizards, had been the true wielders of power here. But that time was long gone. Beyond doubt they would all be glad to lay down whatever was left of their responsibilities and disappear into retirement as soon as Prankipin had given up the ghost.
In the room also were the two chief physicians to the Pontifex, Baergax Vor of Aias and Ghelena Gimail. Their time of glory, too, was over. No longer could they claim the gratitude of the entire Labyrinth bureacracy for their skill at sustaining and extending the Pontifex’s Me. The Pontifex was beyond any kind of repair now; the administration of the Labyrinth was on the verge of undergoing inevitable change, and all the cozy official niches would be swept clean. Now, standing quite literally in the shadow of the three mages, Baergax Vor and Ghelena Gimail looked like nothing more than hollowed husks, their skills exhausted and their occupation nearly gone from them.
As for the Pontifex himself, he lay like a waxen image of himself, motionless, unseeing, while the great ones of Majipoor made ready to offer him what they all passionately hoped would be their final act of homage.
In the hallway outside the Pontifex’s chamber they formed their procession. Lord Confalume, arrayed in the starburst crown and his robe of office, would go in first, of course, with the High Counsellor Duke Oljebbin just behind him, and then the other two senior lords, Serithorn and Gonivaul, side by side. Behind them would walk the hierarch Marcatain, representing the Lady of the Isle of Sleep, who was the third of the three Powers of the Realm; and after her the Procurator Dantirya Sambail, followed by Prince Korsibar and Duke Kanteverel of Bailemoona. Only when all of these had passed into the room would Prince Prestimion at last come in.
That was a thing that would set many tongues to wagging that day, that Korsibar and the rest should have gone in first, and Prestimion after them. But protocol permitted nothing else. All of those who had gone before Prestimion were high officials of the kingdom except for Korsibar, and Korsibar’s prominent place in the procession was assured by the fact of his royal birth. Prestimion held no significant place in the government at this point and had not yet been formally named as Coronal-designate. Until the moment that he was, Prestimion was merely a prince of Castle Mount, one of many; his power and prestige lay all in the future.
The signal to enter the Pontifex’s chamber was given. Confalume stepped forward, and then Duke Oljebbin, and the rest one by one. And as the grandees of the realm filed past the royal bedside, each in turn kneeling and making the sign of submission and blessing, a strange thing happened. The Pontifex’s eyes fluttered open as Korsibar came before him. Agitation was visible on the old man’s face. The fingers of his left hand trembled against the bedcovers; he seemed to be trying to move, even to sit up; a thick, bubbling, incoherent sound came from his lips.
Then, most astounding of all, his arm lifted, ever so slowly, and his gaunt quivering hand reached shakily out toward Korsibar, fingers spread wide. Korsibar stood stock-still, staring down in confusion. From old Prankipin came another sound, a deeper one, almost a groan, amazingly prolonged. He appeared to be trying to clutch at Korsibar’s wrist. But he could not reach that far. For a long moment that clawlike hand jutted upward into the air, jabbing fiercely toward Korsibar, jerking convulsively, and then it fell back. The Pontifex’s eyes filmed over and closed again, and once more the old man in the bed lay still, breathing so lightly that it was almost impossible to tell whether he was still alive.
There was an immediate hubbub in the room.
Prestimion, waiting at the door to the bedchamber for his moment to enter, watched astonished as the three mages moved frantically toward the bed from one side and the two physicians from the other, bending low over the old emperor, their heads close together, each group conferring in urgent whispers in the jargon of its profession. “They’ll smother him with all that attention,” Prestimion murmured to Count Iram of Normork as the bedside conference grew more intense. He could hear a frantic clicking of amulets and the almost panicky-sounding recitation of spells, while the doctors appeared to be trying to push the mages away, and one of them finally succeeded in putting a flask of some bluish medicine to the Pontifex’s lips.
Then the crisis seemed to pass, perhaps from the medicine, perhaps the spells: who could say? Slowly the wizards and the physicians backed away from the bed. The Pontifex had subsided once again into the depths of his coma.
The Ghayrog magus, Varimaad Klain, beckoned brusquely to Prestimion to enter the room.
He knelt as he had seen the others do before him. And made the sign of the Pontifex, and waited, half afraid that the old man would rise up again in that terrifying way and reach out for him also.
But Prankipin did not move. Prestimion put his head close to him, listening to the faint hoarse sound of his ragged breathing. He muttered the words of the blessing; Prankipin did not respond. Behind the closed lids his eyes were without movement. His waxen-looking face was smooth again, tranquil, smiling that eerie smile.
This is death-in-life, thought Prestimion, appalled. A horror. A horror. A storm of pity and revulsion swept through him. He rose abruptly from the Pontifex’s bedside and strode with swift brusque steps toward the room’s rear door.
* * *
Prestimion’s face was bleak as he emerged from the imperial bedchamber. Septach Melayn and Gialaurys met him on the ramp leading upward to the Arena, where the games would commence in little more than an hour; and, seeing the expression on the prince’s features, they glanced quickly at each other in alarm.
“What is it, Prestimion, has his majesty died?” Septach Melayn asked. “You look to be half a dead man yourself!”
“Poor Prankipin still lives, more or less,” Prestimion replied, grimacing. “More’s the sorrow for that. And as for me, no, not dead even by half, only a trifle sick to my stomach. The Pontifex lies there like a marble statue of himself, completely still, eyes closed, hardly breathing, kept alive by the Divine only knows what sorts of tricks. But you can see that he’s ready to move along, ready and eager. When Korsibar went past him he came alive for a moment, and actually reached out and tried to grab his wrist—it was an awful moment, that hand of his sticking up from the bed, and the sound he made—like a cry of pain, it was—”
“He’ll be at peace soon enough,” said Septach Melayn.
“And those wizards,” Prestimion said. “By the Divine, friends, my gullet is full of wizardry today, and more than full! If only you had seen them standing there—those three weird ghostly sorcerers, hovering over him as though they owned him, swaying from side to side like serpents about to strike as they muttered their unending gibberish—”
“Only three?”
“Three,” said Prestimion. “A Vroon, a Ghayrog, and one of the double-headed ones. They are the three who are said to rule him. And the room all in shadows, and choking with the reeking smoke of incense—books of magic stacked like firewood on every table, and more of them overflowing onto the floor—and the old man altogether lost in dreams in the middle of it all, except for that moment when Korsibar went by him, when it seemed that he briefly awakened, and that rusty horrible screeking noise came from him and he tried to wrap his fingers around Korsibar’s wrist—” Prestimion clapped his
hand to his throat. “I tell you, I came away nauseated with disgust. The stink of that incense is in my nostrils to this very minute. I feel befouled by it and all else that I saw in that chamber just now. It seems to me as though I’ve been crawling through a dark tunnel, a place where spiders make their lair.”
Septach Melayn touched Prestimion’s shoulder comfortingly and held him there for a moment. “You take it much too hard, friend. There’ll be time enough for you to scrape all these sorcerous cobwebs from the world once you’re Coronal. But until then you must simply look upon them as the mere vaporous nonsense they are and not allow them—”
Gialaurys broke in then, red-faced: “Just halt you there, and wait you a moment! You know nothing of these matters, Septach Melayn. Cobwebs, you say? And nonsense? Ah, how simple it is to scoff when you’ve had no experience of the higher wisdoms.”
“The higher wisdoms indeed,” said Septach Melayn lightly.
Gialaurys ignored him. Turning toward Prestimion, the big man said, “And you, prince, who speaks so harshly of these things: be truthful with me, has it been privately agreed between you and Septach Melayn that sorcery will be prohibited when you have the crown? Because if it has been, I ask you to think again. By the Lady, I tell you, Prestimion, these are no mere cobwebs, nor will you sweep them away as readily as you may believe.”
“Easily, easily, good Gialaurys,” Prestimion said. “Banning wizardry from the land is Septach Melayn’s idea, not mine, and I’ve never said I’d attempt such a thing, however I may feel about it in the inwardness of my heart.”
“And in the inwardness of your heart, what?” asked Gialaurys.
“You know that already, good friend. To me these magics are foolish and empty, a mere fraud.”
A stormy aspect darkened Gialaurys’s face. “A fraud? A mere fraud, prince? You can see nothing real in any of it? Oh, Prestimion, how wrong you are in that! On every side its truths are validated every day. You can deny that if you wish. But that doesn’t make it any the less so.”
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