Prestimion felt little joy over his victory. They had brought him the lists of those lost that day, and he studied them in sorrow. On his side the Count of Enkimod had fallen, and Earl Hospend, Kanif of Kanifimot, Talauus of Naibilis, and some threescore more, at least, among his captains; and who knew how many soldiers of the line? And above all others there was Svor, whose body had been found entangled with that of dead Farquanor. That loss alone stung Prestimion more than all the rest together who had fallen in the battle that day, except for one.
He had heard from Septach Melayn how that one had died: as strangely as she had lived, encircled to the last by treason and betrayal. So he would never learn what his life with her might have been. He found a flower somewhere and laid it on her grave, and tried to seal away in some corner of his heart the pain that he knew he would always feel.
Korsibar he buried by Thismet’s side, feeling as much regret for the one as for the other, though it was a different quality of regret for each: for one had been a great man wasted, and the other had been a woman he had learned unexpectedly and too late to love. But there had been greatness in her too, and it was gone now.
Farquanor—Farholt—well, who would miss them? But a whole host of Korsibar’s other captains had fallen with them, such men as Mandrykarn and Venta; Gapithain, Duke of Korsz; the good-hearted Kanteverel of Bailemoona; Sibellor of Banglecode; and also Count Iram, and good Earl Kamba of Mazadone, who had taught the art of archery to him, and Vimnad Gezelstad, among many another. Prestimion would have had them all alive again, if he could, for they had each in their own way been ornaments to the world, and he pitied them for the fatal decision they had made to cast in their lots with Korsibar.
A waste, a waste, a ghastly terrible waste. And all of it unnecessary, Prestimion thought.
If only it could all be undone—if only—
Of those of Korsibar’s faction who had survived the battle, he pardoned all. The war was over: there were no more enemies, and the world had but one Coronal. Navigorn of Hoikmar came before him first, and knelt and made the starburst with unfeigned sincerity. He had seen his error and repented of it, he said; and Prestimion believed him. After him came Oljebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul, and Prestimion pardoned them too, though he had no illusions concerning those three. But he was determined that the bitterness of this war would be washed away. The faster these seething hatreds were put to rest, the better for all.
“And you,” Prestimion said, looking down at the Vroon, Thalnap Zelifor. “How many more shifts of allegiance can you make, now that there’s only one allegiance to have?” And laughed, for there was no malice in his heart today. “You told me when we were in the west country that you were going back to the Castle, as I recall, only for the sake of fetching your mind-reading devices, and then would return with them to help me in my war.”
“I cast the runes for you, and they said you were doomed,” replied the Vroon. “And the report from Lake Mavestoi confirmed it: you had been lost in the flood. Why, then, should I go to the aid of a dead man? But my runes were wrong, and so were the reports.”
“How glib you are, Thalnap Zelifor. You always have an answer. Well, I’ll put you and your machines where they can do no more harm.” He beckoned forth an evil-faced little thin-lipped man with shifty eyes, who had been in Duke Svor’s service. Prestimion had never liked having him around, and there was no need to keep him now. “You,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Barjazid, my lord.”
“Barjazid. Very well, Barjazid. Escort this Vroon to the Castle, Barjazid, and clean out his entire workshop of mysterious mind-reading devices, and pack them and him up and take them both to Suvrael.”
“To Suvrael, my lord?”
“To Suvrael. To distant torrid Suvrael. On pain of your life, Barjazid, get him to Suvrael, and let him play no tricks on you along the way. I’ll punish nobody for what has happened in this war, but there are some I would not like to have about me any closer than Suvrael, and Thalnap Zelifor’s one of them. He can’t be trusted, even in a world that has no enemies. Take him to Suvrael for me, Barjazid. And see that he stays there.”
The little man gave Prestimion a starburst and a squinty-eyed look of devotion.
“It will be done, my lord.”
He gathered Thalnap Zelifor up and moved away.
Prestimion stood for a time in silence, looking out once more over the battlefield. A great weariness was on him, as though he had crossed the parched sun-smitten Valmambra two or three times this one day. He was Coronal of Majipoor now: the world had been given into his hand. Why was there no joy in that thought?
Well, the joy would come, he supposed. He would see vast Majipoor green and glowing, as he had in his vision when it was only a little ball he could hold in his hands; he would cherish it and nurture it and protect it and its people until the day of his death. But just for now, this day of triumph and loss, there was only the weariness, and the sadness. He understood that he had been through a strange test these past few years, and he would be a while recovering from it. Had he expected to have the crown handed to him on a platter, as it had been to so many Coronals before him? That had not been his destiny, apparently. He had discovered that it was necessary to earn that crown a thousand times over, through all that he had suffered in the Labyrinth and in the desert and on the field of battle, and no doubt he must go on earning it and earning it all the days of his life to come.
A test, yes, all of it. Of his strength, of his will, of his patience, of his skill. Of his quality as a man. Of his right to be king. If he had suffered more than most of his predecessors to become Coronal, there must have been a reason for it. And out of his suffering would come something of value. He could not dare to believe otherwise. He would not. There had been a purpose to it all. It was unthinkable that there had not been.
Unthinkable.
And as Prestimion stood at the edge of the battlefield thinking these things, and reflecting on all he had experienced in this long harsh quest for the crown, and all he had learned, and all the ways he had changed, a strange idea came to him that sent a shiver of astonishment along his spine: a way to return the world, as much of it as could be returned, to what it had been before Korsibar had seized the throne.
Perhaps—perhaps, however difficult, however immense the task might be—
Surely it was worth the attempt, at any rate.
Turning to Septach Melayn and Gialaurys, he said, “Clear this place of everyone but you two, and bring Gominik Halvor and his son Heszmon Gorse before me. I have one last chore for them to do before we begin our march to Castle Mount.”
It was night now. The new star that had come into the heavens after the death of Prankipin stood high in the sky, bathing them in its eerie blue-white light. Lord Korsibar’s star, men had called it when it first appeared. But it was Lord Prestimion’s star now.
The two mages took their places before him and waited, and Prestimion, when he had arranged his thoughts to suit himself, said, “I will ask a thing from you now that will be the greatest conjuration that has ever been worked in all the history of the world; and it is my hope that you will not refuse me.”
“We already know what you want, my lord,” said Heszmon Gorse. “Yes. You would, I suppose. And can it be done?” “It will be an even greater effort than you can suppose.” “Yes,” said Prestimion. “Even now I have no real knowledge of what’s possible and what is not in your art, your science, whatever I must call it. But the thing has to be done. The world has suffered a terrible wound. We have never had such a war as this; and I want it expunged wholly from our history, which means from the minds of all who live today, and all those who follow after. I want the bloody stain of it to be wiped away as though it never had been.”
“This will take our every skill,” said Heszmon Gorse, “and even more, perhaps.”
“You’ll have the Lady Kunigarda of the Isle to assist you: her dream-machinery, all the personnel at her command at t
he Isle of Dreams, who have the means for reaching into many millions of minds at once. She is on our way toward us now with her special devices in her train, I am told, and will be with us soon. And also you will have the services of every magus you require: every last one of them will be at your command, if you desire it, the grandest convocation of the masters of your arts that has ever been brought together. You will see to it that when the task is done, what has happened will never have happened. No one will have memory of the existence of Korsibar and Thismet, the children of Confalume and Roxivail: no one. This usurpation will have been unhappened. The world will believe that I have been Coronal from the day of Prankipin’s death. And those who died in the battles of these civil wars will be deemed to have died in other ways, for other reasons—it matters not what they are, except that they must not have died on the field of battle. The world must forget this war. The world must come to believe it never occurred.”
“A universal obliteration, that is what you require of us,” said Gominik Halvor.
“Universal except for myself, and Gialaurys here, and Septach Melayn. We three must remember it to our last days, so that we can be sure that nothing like it will happen again. But we are to be the only ones.”
“Even we, we are to forget, once the job is done?” the old magus asked. Prestimion gave him a long steady look. “Even you,” he said.
* * *
And so it was done; and so the world was born clean and fresh again out of the blood and ashes of the war between the rival Coronals; and in the springtime of the new year Lord Prestimion made the journey once more down the River Glayge from the Castle to the Labyrinth to pay his respects to the Pontifex Confalume, whom insofar as anyone knew he had succeeded several years before as Coronal, in the hour of the death of the old Pontifex Prankipin.
He found Confalume robust and full of vigor, looking like a man only a little beyond the prime of his years, who might still be forceful enough to carry the responsibilities of a Coronal if time had not moved him along to the senior throne. This was the strong vital Confalume that Prestimion remembered from the old days at the Castle, not the shattered one of the early hours of his reign that only a few recalled.
Yes, this was a thriving Confalume, a Confalume rejuvenated. Most joyously did he embrace Prestimion, and they sat side by side on the thrones that were maintained for the two monarchs in the underground city, and spoke for a long while of such urgent matters of the realm as presently needed to be discussed between them. “You will not be so long in coming the next time, will you?” Confalume asked, when those matters had been satisfactorily dealt with. He rose and put his hands on Prestimion’s shoulders and looked squarely into Prestimion’s eyes. “You know what pleasure it gives me whenever I see you, my son.”
Prestimion smiled at that. And Confalume said, “Yes, ‘my son,’ is what I said. For I had always wanted a son, but the Divine would never send me one. But now I have one. For by law the Coronal is deemed the son by adoption of the Pontifex, is he not? And so you are my son, Prestimion. You are my son!” And then Confalume said, after a time, “You should marry, Prestimion. Surely there’s a woman somewhere who’d be a fitting consort for you.”
“Surely there is,” said Prestimion, “and may it be that I find her, someday. And let us say no more on that subject now, eh, Father? In time there’ll be a wife for me, that I know. But I am not quite ready just yet, I think, to set about searching for her.” And the thought came to him of the woman that he and only two others in all the world knew had once existed. But of her he could say nothing, and never would again.
So it was that the great war of the usurpation had its end and vanished from the minds of the people of Majipoor, and the world’s great age began anew. The reign of Confalume and Lord Prestimion together lasted many years, until Confalume in the immensity of his years was gathered to the Source, and Prestimion became Pontifex himself after a long and glorious time as Coronal, which the world would long remember and cherish. And the man Lord Prestimion chose to be Coronal when it was time for him to go to the Labyrinth was named Dekkeret, whose reign would be a glorious one also. But that is another story.
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Sorcerers of Majipoor m-4 Page 58
