Serithorn’s elegant facade of unshakable poise gave way to a gasp of astonishment.
“Alive?”
“Yes. This is confirmed, just today. I don’t think the Coronal knows it yet: Farquanor’s afraid to tell him, apparently. Prestimion has been in Triggoin, it seems, but now, according to Gonivaul, he’s out and marching around again somewhere in western Alhanroel, patching together those pieces of the rebel army that Korsibar didn’t drown, and recruiting a new—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Gonivaul,” Oljebbin said. “I asked him to join me here.”
“Come in, admiral!” Serithorn called, and Prince Gonivaul strode into the room. His shaggy-bearded face was grim and stormy.
“Has Oljebbin told you—” he began.
“Yes,” Serithorn said. “We’re all supposed to be Metamorphs. Well, we aren’t, and that’s that. But what’s this business about Prestimion being alive? ”
“He is. That’s definite. He’s come out of the north—Triggoin, I hear—and has set up headquarters for himself in the plains between Gloyn and Marakeeba, which are places somewhere on the far side of the Trikkalas. He’s collecting a new army there, with the notion of marching to Castle Mount, gathering up a billion or so rebel soldiers along the way, and pushing Korsibar off the throne.”
“Is he the one behind this lunatic thing of Korsibar’s being a Metamorph?” Serithorn asked.
Gonivaul shrugged. “I can’t say. There’s probably no connection. But certainly he’ll be willing to make damaging use of it as propaganda. ‘Accept me as your true Coronal in place of this creature who pretends to be Korsibar,’ he’ll say. The person you take for Korsibar is not only an unlawful Coronal but an evil Metamorph impostor!’ And people will gobble it up.—There’s a germ of truth, I think, in this Metamorph fable, anyway.”
“There is?” said Oljebbin and Serithorn at one and the same instant.
“Oh, not literally,” Gonivaul said. “But Korsibar’s been very thick these last few months with the Vroon Thalnap Zelifor, who used to work for me once upon a time, and who, as you may recall, got himself into big trouble with Korsibar last year by putting some kind of wild ideas into the Lady Thismet’s head and after that by running off to join Prestimion. When the Vroon came scooting back here after Prestimion’s defeat at Stymphinor, he managed somehow to talk his way into Korsibar’s good graces, don’t ask me how, and has been right up there in prestige with Sanibak-Thastimoon on his staff of mages ever since.
“Well, this Thalnap Zelifor is very good with gadgets, and I happen to know that something he was working on when he was in my pay was a device that would allow the wearer to seem to change shape. Not actual shapeshifting, mind you, just the illusion of it. Now, there definitely seems to be some escapade of Korsibar’s at the bottom of all these stories—he was seen changing shapes in Bombifale or Bibiroon or somewhere by a vacationing businessman who doesn’t seem to have had any reason to be inventing the tale, and he says Korsibar had a Vroon with him at the time. My guess is that he and Thalnap Zelifor slipped away from the Castle to experiment with this machine, and got careless with it just as the businessman happened by. After which the story started circulating that—”
“All right,” Oljebbin said. “Whether it did or didn’t happen that way, the main thing is that the story’s traveling like wildfire and doing Korsibar a lot of harm. Metamorphs are feared and detested everywhere. He’ll have a hard time scrubbing away the taint. True or false, this business is bound to weaken Korsibar’s position with the common folk, which is weak enough already now that Kunigarda’s been speaking out against him. With Prestimion suddenly back in the picture, what I want to know from you two is this: is this the moment for us to withdraw our support from Korsibar too?”
“In favor of Prestimion?” Serithorn asked, eyebrows lifting in surprise.
“No,” said Oljebbin sharply. “In favor of Prankipin’s embalmed corpse. In favor of the statue of Lord Stiamot, maybe. Who do you think I’m talking about, Serithorn?”
“Prestimion doesn’t have a chance of becoming Coronal, not now, not ever,” said Serithorn in a quiet emphatic tone.
“You say this?” asked Oljebbin. “You, his good friend for so long, his mother’s very good friend?”
Serithorn reddened faintly at that. But his voice remained calm as he replied, “There’s a curse of some sort on Prestimion. Anybody who couldn’t keep an idiot like Korsibar from nudging him aside when the throne became vacant and the whole world was expecting him to become Coronal is plainly marked by the gods for misfortune. Now that he’s back in view and heading this way, something will go wrong again. Korsibar will dump another reservoir on him or a stray arrow will get him or he’ll be eaten by vorzaks as he comes over the mountains. Mark my words, Prestimion won’t have any more success this time than he did before.”
“So if we were to back him,” Oljebbin said, “we’d be cutting our own throats?”
“Essentially,” said Serithorn.
“But that would leave us with a Coronal who half the world believes is a Metamorph! There’s no way Korsibar can stand up in front of everybody and prove he isn’t one, is there? This numbskull rumor will eventually do irreparable harm to his ability to govern, if it hasn’t already, and then—”
“You’re forgetting someone,” Gonivaul said.
Oljebbin stared. “What do you mean?”
“The name of Dantirya Sambail hasn’t been mentioned at all since I entered the room. Korsibar’s done for, I agree: these wild stories never get properly contradicted, and sooner or later everybody out there will have been made permanently suspicious of him. As for Prestimion, I share Serithorn’s view of him: he’s simply a poor unlucky devil and I can’t believe he’ll ever manage to get the throne he so richly deserves to have. That leaves the Procurator. Since the Mavestoi business he’s quietly pushed Farquanor and everybody else aside and has made himself Korsibar’s chief adviser, at least unofficially. Now Korsibar is having political problems in the provinces because of this bizarre Metamorph thing. All right: either Dantirya Sambail will very shortly overthrow Korsibar himself—’for the good of Majipoor,’ as he’ll piously tell everybody—or else, in the coming war with Prestimion, Dantirya Sambail will advise Korsibar right into some terrible calamity. One way or the other, Korsibar goes out of the picture before long and Dantirya Sambail emerges on top. If we’re smart, and we are, we’ll cultivate the friendship of Dantirya Sambail at this particular point in time.—What do you think, Serithorn?”
“I agree completely. Korsibar’s position is suddenly very wobbly, not that it was tremendously strong in the first place, because of the legalities, Coronal’s son becoming Coronal, and all that. Prestimion’s isn’t any better. He was never officially named Coronal-designate, after all. So, even if he’s the winner in this new war that’s shaping up, he’s got no very valid claim himself. Dantirya Sambail, on the other hand, can argue that as Procurator of Ni-moya he stands second only to the Pontifex Confalume, and therefore is the logical and legitimate heir to the Coronal’s throne.”
“Very well thought out,” said Oljebbin. “At last I make out a pattern in all this chaos. Our strategy, my lords, is to pledge our undying support in the coming challenge for the throne to our beloved Lord Korsibar and his loyal ally the Procurator of Ni-moya, and roundly condemn the audacity of the criminal upstart Prestimion. If Korsibar somehow survives and remains on the throne, he’ll be indebted to us forever. If he doesn’t, he’ll almost certainly be replaced as Coronal by Dantirya Sambail, who also will be grateful to have had our help. Either way, we’re on the winning side. Are we agreed, gentlemen?”
“Absolutely,” said Gonivaul at once.
“Let us drink to it,” said Serithorn, pulling a dusty bottle of wine from his cabinet. “Good Muldemar wine, as it happens, Prestimion’s own. Fifteen years old.—To peace, gentlemen! To everlasting peace and harmony in the world!”
6
Thismet said, “Have you heard these stories, Melithyrrh, that say that my brother is a Metamorph?” “What foolishness they are, my lady!”
“Yes. Foolishness indeed. If he is a Metamorph, then what am I, who was hatched in the same womb as he?”
“The stories, as I hear them, have it that he was replaced by a Metamorph secretly as a grown man, not that he was born one. But all of it is nonsense. You should pay no attention, my lady.”
’True. I shouldn’t. But it’s so hard, Melithyrrh!”
Thismet rose from her divan and crossed the room to the octagonal window that gave a view of Lord Siminave’s dazzling reflecting pool, and then, pivoting restlessly, went to the other side, opening her wardrobe’s fragrant doors of shimmak-wood to reveal all her wealth of clothing within, the scores of brocaded robes and jeweled gowns and bodices and chemises and cassocks and all the rest, everything fashioned from her own design by the most skilled clothing-makers of Majipoor. She had worn many of them only once or twice, some not at all; and now they needed to be refitted, so lean and gaunt had she become in these sour days. She barely ate any longer; she scarcely slept. Korsibar’s coming to the throne, which had seemed such a glorious thing to her once, had been the ruination of them both.
Melithyrrh said, “My lady, please—this pacing, this constant fretting of yours—”
“I’ve had to swallow too much, Melithyrrh! Traitors and villains on all sides. The sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon, who deludes me into thinking great things are in store for me, and turns his back on me at the first opportunity! The other sorcerer, Thalnap Zelifor, who goads me into giving offense to my brother, and then leaves me altogether, and when he returns is suddenly my brother’s devoted servant! Or the vile Farquanor, who comes right into these rooms—he stood over there, in the jade drawing room—I should have had the floor scrubbed with acid afterward—and says to me, cool as ice, ‘Marry me, Thismet, it will improve your social standing at the Castle.’ Calling me Thismet, as though I were a serving-wench! And going unpunished for it when I denounced him to Korsibar.”
“My lady—”
“And Korsibar,” Thismet went on. “My wonderful heroic brother, who made himself Coronal simply because I told him to do it, and who rewards me by making me an exile within the very walls of the Castle, ignored, excluded, shunted about with impunity, while he surrounds himself with cheats and liars and treacherous traitors who are leading him to destruction, men like Dantirya Sambail lording it around the Castle now as though he were Coronal and Pontifex both at once—too much, Melithyrrh, much too much! I can abide this place and these people no longer.” She drifted on into the room adjacent, where her treasures of jewelry were housed, her wondrous rings and pendants and necklaces that were the equal of the best that any Coronal’s consort had ever possessed, and stood with her delicate white hands plunged deep amongst them as though it was some hoard of buried treasure that she had just uncovered. After a time she said in a much quieter voice, “Melithyrrh, will you accompany me on a little journey?”
“Of course, my lady. A few days in High Morpin, perhaps—they’ll do you a world of good. Or a visit to the gardens at Tolingar—a holiday in Bombifale—”
“No,” Thismet said. “Not Bombifale, not Tolingar. Nor High Morpin neither. A longer journey is what I have in mind. Do you know where Gloyn is, Melithyrrh?”
“Gloyn?” Melithyrrh repeated blankly, as though Thismet had spoken the name of some other planet.
“Gloyn. It’s a city, or maybe a town, in western Alhanroel, across the Trikkala Mountains, but this side of Alaisor.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Melithyrrh, mystified.
“No. Nor I, before this day. But I have a mind to go there now. To leave tomorrow, just you and I together. Come, let’s pack some things. You can operate a floater, can’t you? And I’m fairly sure I can. I can’t tell you how eager I am to get away from this place—out into the fresh air, a little adventure of our own, the first one I’ve ever had: just you and me, Melithyrrh—”
“May I ask, lady, what attraction there is in Gloyn?”
“Prestimion,” Thismet said.
* * *
In the end she took much less with her than she would have imagined possible to travel with, almost none of her elegant robes and gowns, only simple rough clothes that would be useful in the place where she was going, and just a handful of baubles, a few rings and necklaces to remind her that she was the owner of such things. But also she took a small jewel-handled dagger that she could strap along the inside of her left arm, and, after some thought, an energy-thrower she had borrowed in a moment of foresight from the weapons storehouse, a month before. She had no clear idea of how to use it, and had heard that the things were terribly unreliable in any case, but she supposed it would serve to frighten away anyone who might think that two young women traveling by themselves were easy prey.
Operating the floater was the most challenging part. She had never driven one herself or even paid much attention to what the driver was doing as she was taken about. Nor, as it developed, had Melithyrrh had any experience in driving. But there couldn’t be much to it, could there? Start, stop, up, down, slower, faster—that was about it, she thought. At an hour when Korsibar and the others were having another of their interminable Council meetings—they were always having long meetings nowadays, what with Prestimion’s new rebellion gathering strength in the west and this absurd ongoing crisis of the Metamorph rumors—Thismet requisitioned a pleasure-floater from the captain of the guards, and she and Melithyrrh went down to Dizimaule Plaza together to pick it up.
The guardsman who brought the floater around looked at them a little strangely when he realized they had no driver of their own with them. But it was not his place to ask questions of the Coronal’s sister. He helped them load their baggage in the storage compartment, and held the door open for them.
“You drive it first,” Thismet whispered.
“Me? But—my lady—”
“They’ll think something’s really wrong if I sit down in front of the controls. Go on!”
“Yes, my lady.”
Melithyrrh studied the panel of controls for a moment. Eight or nine knobs, none of them identified. She took a long deep breath and touched one. Nothing happened. The guardsman was staring open-mouthed at them. Surely he had never seen two ladies of rank get into a floater before on their own.
Melithyrhh pressed another knob. A humming sound came from below them.
“Those are the rotors starting up,” said Thismet. “Now touch the knob to the left of it.”
It was only a guess, but a good one. The nose of the floater came up six inches from the ground, eight inches, ten. And kept on rising.
“Let go of it!” Thismet cried. The floater descended a bit and leveled off. “Now the next knob to the left!” That one sent the floater jolting violently backward. Thismet snatched Melithyrrh’s hand from the knob and put her own on the one just to the right of the rotor control. Just as violently, the floater began moving forward. The guardsman, who had backed away from the vehicle at its first lurch, stood off to one side, mouth gaping even wider. “Here we go!” Thismet exclaimed as the floater went cruising uncertainly off toward the Grand Calintane Highway.
“I think I have the essence of the thing now,” Melithyrrh said. “This one makes it go faster, this one slows it down. And this one turns it to the—right? No, the left, I guess. So this one must be—”
“You’re doing very well,” Thismet said. And indeed she was. The floater was remaining level in relation to the ground now, and moving smoothly down the center of the highway track. A sign loomed up. High Morpin to the left, Halanx to the right. “Take the Halanx road,” Thismet ordered. Melithyrrh touched a knob. The floater veered to the right, not too jerkily. “You see?” said Thismet. “Nothing to it at all. We’re on our way.”
Getting off the Mount was the first task. They needed to go west once they were in the flatlands: that meant lea
ving the Mount by the Dundilmir side, Thismet knew. But Dundilmir was a Slope City, far down near the bottom of the Mount. To get there they had to make their way first through the three higher levels, the Inner Cities, the Guardian Cities, the Free Cities. She had a vague idea of a route that ran down through Banglecode to Hoikmar or Greel and another that led downward from there to Castlethorn or Gimkandale, which ought to take them to Dundilmir and thence to ground level. But her knowledge of Mount geography was imperfect and did not at all include an awareness of the intricate spires and secondary peaks that complicated travel up and down the sides of the immense mountain. One couldn’t simply go from Point A to Point B because they were in a straight line on a map; one had to find a road that actually connected them, and sometimes that involved going halfway around the Mount. And so they spent their first night, unexpectedly, at an inn in the city of Guand, which Thismet had never visited in her life, and which they arrived in under the mistaken impression that they had taken the Banglecode road out of Halanx.
The inn was the best they could find, but it was something less than luxurious. From the innkeeper came impertinent stares, even though they had dressed as unflatteringly as they knew how, with all color washed from their faces and their hair pulled severely back. The room was small and bleak and there were stains on the walls and the bedding did not seem fresh. The dinner they bought for themselves there was unthinkably bad, unknown pale meat fried in grease. All night there were sounds of laughter and bedsprings from adjacent rooms.
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