“No. To the Isle of Sleep,” Prestimion replied. “My mother remains in residence there. For the second time she has lost a son. It’ll do her good to have a visit from me in such a dark hour.” Rising, he said, “We should rejoin the company above, I think. Send for your Dinitak, and let’s meet with him here somewhere in the next few days.”
“I will, Prestimion.”
As they ascended the stairs Prestimion said, “I note that you come here with the Lady Fulkari. I found that somewhat surprising, after the conversation that you and I had had about her.”
“We are betrothed,” said Dekkeret, with a tiny smile.
“Even more of a surprise. It was my impression that Fulkari had rejected the idea of becoming the consort of the Coronal, and you were searching for some way to break with her. Am I wrong about that?”
“Not at all. But we held further discussions. We explained ourselves more clearly to each other.—Of course, there’ll be no announcement of any plans for a royal marriage until the pain of this business with Teotas has had a chance to fade.”
“Naturally not. But I hope you’ll give me proper notice when the time comes. I would have liked Confalume to officiate at my wedding, if events had permitted.” Prestimion paused and caught Dekkeret for a moment by the hand. “It would give me great pleasure to officiate at yours.”
“Let it be the Divine’s will that you do,” said Dekkeret. “It would be a good thing, anyway, that the next time the Pontifex travels to Castle Mount from the Labyrinth it’s for a happier occasion than the present one.”
2
“My lord may I come in?” Abrigant said to Dekkeret, who had gone to the door to answer his knock.
Teotas’s funeral was three days in the past, now. Dinitak had come down from the Castle at Prestimion’s request. He and Prestimion and Dekkeret had been meeting for more than an hour. Things had not gone entirely smoothly. Something was amiss, though Dekkeret had no idea what it was. Prestimion seemed to be in a dark, cold, brooding mood, saying little, sometimes putting a curious bit of overemphasis on some otherwise innocuous statement. It was as if some change had come over him the other day, once Dekkeret had raised the likelihood that it was the Barjazid helmet that was to blame for what had befallen Teotas.
Abrigant’s knock offered a welcome break in the tension. Dekkeret went quickly to the door of Prestimion’s suite to see who it was, leaving Prestimion and Dinitak huddled over the helmet that Dinitak had brought down to Muldemar House with him. Prestimion was examining the helmet closely, poking at it with a fingertip and muttering under his breath, staring at it with open hatred as though it were some malevolent living thing that gave off poisonous exhalations. The Pontifex was radiating such an intensity of feeling that Dekkeret was glad to have an excuse to get away from him for a moment.
“It’s your brother you’re looking for, I suppose,” said Dekkeret. He gestured rearward with his thumb. “Prestimion’s back there.”
Abrigant seemed surprised and perhaps dismayed to discover Dekkeret answering at Prestimion’s door. “Am I interrupting official business, my lord?”
“There’s a fairly important meeting going on, yes. But I think we can take a break for a little while.” Dekkeret heard footsteps behind him. Prestimion, frowning, emerged from within. “The Pontifex evidently feels the same way.”
Abrigant looked toward his brother and said, with some chagrin, “I had no idea, Prestimion, that you and the Coronal were having a conference, or I certainly would never have presumed—”
“A little intermission in the proceedings was in order, anyway,” Prestimion said. His tone was affable enough. But the tight set of his mouth and jaws showed exactly how displeased he was by the interruption. “Is there some urgent news that I need to know about, Abrigant?”
“News? No news, no. Only a little bit of family business. A matter of a minute or two.” Abrigant seemed off-balance. He shot a swift glance at Dekkeret, and then one at Dinitak, who now had come out from within also. “This really can wait, you know. It was hardly my intention to—”
Prestimion cut him off. “No matter. If we can take care of it as quickly as you say—”
“Shall Dinitak and I go back inside, and leave this sitting-room to the two of you?” asked Dekkeret.
“No, stay,” said Abrigant. “This isn’t really anything that requires privacy, I suppose. With your permission, my lords: I will need only a moment.” To Prestimion he said, “Brother, I’ve just been speaking with Varaile. She tells me that you and she will be leaving here in a day or two: not for the Labyrinth, though, but for the Isle of Sleep. Is this so?”
“It is.”
“It was my thought to go to the Isle myself, actually, as soon as I’ve dealt with all current business here. Our mother should not be alone at a time like this.”
Prestimion appeared irritated and confused. “Are you saying that you’d like to accompany me there, Abrigant?”
Abrigant’s face now mirrored Prestimion’s puzzlement. “That isn’t exactly what I had in mind. One of us must surely go to her; and I simply assumed that the responsibility for undertaking the trip would fall to me. The Pontifex, I felt, is likely to have important official duties at the Labyrinth that would prevent him from making such a long journey.” And, with increasing discomfort: “It’s certainly not customary for Pontifexes to visit the Isle, as I understand it. Or Coronals either, for that matter.”
“A great many things that aren’t customary have been happening in recent years,” Prestimion returned smoothly. “And I can do my Pontifexing wherever I happen to be.” His face darkened. “I am the eldest of her sons, Abrigant. I think this task is one for me to handle.”
“On the contrary, Prestimion—”
Dekkeret was beginning to find it more than a little embarrassing to be listening to this conversation between the brothers. He had been an unwilling witness to it in the first place; but now that it had turned into a tense dispute, it was something that he very much did not want to be overhearing. Something was going on here that only a member of the family could fully understand, and that no outsider should see.
If Abrigant, who had relinquished all public duties upon Dekkeret’s ascent to the throne and had more leisure for family matters these days than his royal brother, believed that he should be the one to comfort their mother in this difficult hour—well, Dekkeret conceded, he did have good reason for thinking that. But Prestimion was the older brother. Should he not be the one who decided which one of them was to go to the Isle?
And Prestimion was Pontifex as well. No one, Dekkeret thought, not even the Pontifex’s brother, should say something like “On the contrary” to a Pontifex.
In the end that was the conclusive point. Prestimion listened for a few moments more, confronting Abrigant with folded arms and containing himself with an only too apparent show of elaborate patience as Abrigant argued his case; and then he said simply, “I understand your feelings, brother. But I have other reasons, reasons of state, for needing to be abroad at this present moment. The Isle will be merely the first stop on my journey.” He was staring unwaveringly at Abrigant now. “What I must deal with,” Prestimion said, “is the matter that was under discussion here when you knocked at the door just now. Since it would be convenient as well as desirable for me to go to the Isle, there’s no need for you to make the trip as well.”
Abrigant greeted that with an instant or two of silence and a baffled stare. It seemed to be gradually sinking in upon him that Prestimion’s words amounted to a command.
Dekkeret had no doubt that the Pontifex’s brother was still displeased. But there could be no pursuing the issue beyond this point. Abrigant forced a smile that showed only a wintry warmth. “Well, then, Prestimion, in that case I have to yield to you, don’t I? Very well, I yield. Carry my love to our mother, if you will, and tell her that my thoughts have been with her from the first moment of this tragedy.”
“That I will do. And your task now wi
ll be to comfort the Lady Fiorinda. I leave her in your care.”
Abrigant did not seem to be prepared for that either. He was already upset by his capitulation to Prestimion on the journey to the Isle, and further bewilderment appeared on his face at this latest statement of Prestimion’s. “What? Fiorinda’s going to stay here, then? She won’t be accompanying Varaile on these travels of yours?”
“That would not be a good idea, I think. Varaile will send for her when we have returned to the Labyrinth. Until that time, I prefer to let her remain at Muldemar.” Then—in a gesture that seemed to Dekkeret to be rather more of a display of imperial strength than of fraternal affection—Prestimion held out his arms stiffly toward Abrigant and said, “Come, brother, give me an embrace, and then I must get on with this meeting.”
When Abrigant had gone from the room and they had gone back within, Dekkeret turned to Prestimion and said, by way of breaking the vacuum of uneasy silence that lingered in Abrigant’s wake, “What exactly are these travels of which you were speaking a moment ago, majesty? If I may know.”
“I’ve made no final decision yet.” The sharpness remained in Prestimion’s voice. “But there’s no question but that you and I will be in motion in the months ahead.” He gathered up the helmet, which he had left lying on the table, and poured the soft metal meshes from his right hand to the left one like a hoard of golden coins. “Foh! I never thought I’d be handling this filthy thing again. It was almost the killing of me, once. You remember that, do you?”
“We can never forget it, your majesty,” Dinitak said. “We saw you brought to your knees from the effort of using it, that time when you were sending your spirit all through the world to heal people of the madness.”
Prestimion smiled a pale smile. “So I was. And you said to Dekkeret, ‘Get it off his head,’ as I recall it, and Dekkeret answered that it was forbidden to handle a Coronal in such fashion, and you told him to remove it anyway, or the world would need a new Coronal in a very short while. And so Dekkeret removed it from my head.—I wonder, Dinitak, would you have taken it from me yourself if Dekkeret hadn’t finally been willing to do it?”
Quickly Dekkeret said, not bothering to conceal the annoyance in his voice, “The question’s unfair, Prestimion. Why ask him such a thing? I did take the helmet off you when I saw what it was doing to you.”
But Dinitak turned to Dekkeret and said coolly, “I have no objection to replying to the Pontifex’s question.” And, to Prestimion: “I would have removed it, yes, your majesty. One holds the person of a Coronal sacred, up to a point. But one doesn’t stand idly by while the Coronal’s life is in danger. I understood the power of that helmet better than either of you. You were pouring all your strength into it, majesty, and you had used it long enough. It was placing you in great peril.” Dinitak’s dark face had grown very flushed. “I would not have hesitated to pull it from your brow if Dekkeret found himself unable to do so. And if Dekkeret had tried to prevent me, I would have pushed him aside.”
“Well spoken,” Prestimion said, with a little gesture of applause. “I like the way you said that: ‘I would have pushed him aside.’ You’ve never gone in very much for diplomacy or tact, have you, Dinitak? But you’re certainly an honest man.”
“The only one his family has managed to produce in ten thousand years,” said Dekkeret, and laughed. Dinitak, after a moment, broke into laughter also, with unfeigned heartiness.
Only Prestimion maintained a sober mien. The strange tension that had been settling about him since the first moments of this afternoon’s meeting had heightened after Abrigant’s departure. Now there was a powerful undercurrent of edginess about him, as though he were contending with some explosive inner force that he could barely hold in check.
But his voice was calm enough as he threw the helmet back down on the table and said, “Well, may the Divine preserve me from ever having to don that thing again! I remember its powers only too vividly. A man my age has no business going near it. When we need it again, it’ll be you, Dinitak, who’ll do the work, eh? Not me.” He looked then toward his Coronal.—“And not you either, Dekkeret!”
“The thought had not occurred to me, I assure you,” Dekkeret replied. He wanted very much to return to the theme that Prestimion had so casually brushed aside.—“You said a minute ago, Prestimion, that the two of us would be in motion. Where will you be going, do you think?”
“What I intend to do is something Pontifexes rarely have done. Which is to travel hither and yon about the land, according to no fixed plan. This for the sake of guarding my family against the reach of our friend Mandralisca’s malice.”
Dekkeret nodded. “That seems wise.”
“I’ll go to the Isle first, of course, probably by way of the northern route out of Alaisor: they tell me that the prevailing winds will be better this time of year, going that way. Once I’ve seen to my mother I’ll return to the mainland by way of the southern path, via Stoien or Treymone. Stoien, I think: that would be best. If I choose to go back then to the Labyrinth, that’ll provide the most direct route. But where I go once I reach Alhanroel will depend on the doings of Mandralisca and his five brutish masters, how much trouble they intend to create, how much jeopardy I find myself in.”
“You will find yourself in none, I pray,” said Dekkeret fervently. He studied Prestimion with care. The Pontifex still had that strange look about him. Something was ticking within Prestimion, ticking, ticking.—“And what journeys do you have in mind for me, may I ask?”
“You said yourself, just before the funeral, that you were thinking of going to Zimroel and investigating the situation there yourself,” said Prestimion. “Only time will tell whether a step like that will be necessary. I hope that it won’t: a new Coronal has too much to do at the Castle to be going jaunting off to the other continent. But under the present circumstances you surely should put yourself into a position that will allow you to get yourself out there as swiftly as possible, if need be.”
“The western coast, you mean.”
“Exactly. While I’m sailing to the Isle, you should be following in my tracks, zigzagging across the western lands to Alaisor also.”
“You want me to take the land route, then?”
“Yes. Go by land. Show yourself to the people. It always stirs up good feelings when the Coronal comes to town. Your overt pretext will be that you’re making a kind of processional—not the full thing with all the banqueting and circuses, but only a preliminary sort, the new Coronal making a quick tour of the most important cities of central and western Alhanroel. Take Dinitak with you, I think. You’ll want to monitor events on the other continent very closely, and that helmet of his will allow you to do that. Once you’ve reached Alaisor, start down the coast, finishing up at Stoien, say, where you’ll wait for me to return from visiting my mother. When I’m done at the Isle, I’ll meet you at Stoien or thereabouts, and we’ll confer and evaluate the situation as we see it then. It may be necessary for you to go to Zimroel and bring matters under control there. Or perhaps not. How does this sound to you?”
“In perfect conformity with my own ideas.”
“Good. Good.” Prestimion seized Dekkeret’s hand and wrung it with startling force.
Then, at last, his icy self-control broke. He turned quickly away and went striding briskly around the room in quick furious steps, fists clenched, shoulders rigid. Dekkeret suddenly understood the aura of tension that had surrounded Prestimion this day: the man had been overflowing all this while with barely contained rage. That was only too plain now. That his own family should be under attack—his wife and his daughter, and of course Teotas—that was something he could not and would not abide. The Pontifex’s face looked gray with fatigue, but there was a bright spark of anger in his eyes.
A hot stream of words that had been withheld too long came boiling out of him now.
“By the Divine, Dekkeret, can you imagine anything more intolerable! Yet another rebellion? Are we never to be
spared such things? But this time we’ll put a finish to the rebels and their rebellion both. We’ll hunt down this Mandralisca and make an end to him once and for all, and these five brothers as well, and all who swear allegiance to them.”
Prestimion was moving agitatedly about the room all the while, barely pausing to look in Dekkeret’s direction. “I tell you, Dekkeret, whatever was left of my patience is worn away. I’ve spent the twenty years of my reign, Coronal and Pontifex both, struggling with enemies such as no ruler of Majipoor since Stiamot’s time has had to cope with. Drive my brother to madness, will they? Enter the dreams of my little girl, even? No. No! I’ve had enough and more than enough. We’ll cut them down. We’ll abolish them root and branch. Root and branch, Dekkeret!”
Dekkeret had never seen Prestimion in such rage. But then the Pontifex seemed to regain some measure of poise. He halted his frenzied pacing and took up a stance in the middle of the room, letting his arms dangle, breathing slowly in and out. Then he waved Dekkeret and Dinitak unceremoniously to the door. His voice was calmer, now, but it was chilly, even harsh. “Go, now, the two of you. Go! I need to speak with Varaile, to let her know what’s ahead for us.”
Dekkeret was more than happy to be excused from the Pontifex’s presence. This was a new Prestimion, and a frightening one. He was aware that Prestimion had ever been an impulsive and passionate man, his intrinsic shrewdness and caution constantly at war with surging temper and impatience. But there had always been a leavening quality of good humor and playful wit about him that gave him the ability to find sources of fresh strength even in times of the most arduous crisis.
Moderation in the face of adversity had been Prestimion’s defining characteristic throughout his long and challenging reign. Dekkeret had already noticed that in his middle years he seemed to have grown crusty and conservative, as men will often do, and had lost a good deal of that resilience. Prestimion appeared to be taking this Mandralisca business as a personal affront, rather than as the attack on the sanctity of the commonwealth that it actually was.
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