To the fifteen billion people over whom we rule we are the embodiment of all that is sacred here. And so they put us up on these thrones and bow down to us, and who are we to say no to that, if it makes our job of running this immense planet any easier? Think of them, Dekkeret, whenever you find yourself performing some absurd ritual or clambering up onto some overdecorated seat. We are not provincial justices of the peace, you know. We are the essential mainsprings of the world.
So be it, Dekkeret thought. This was the task that faced the Coronal Lord of Majipoor today. He would not question it.
He laid the wreath in its pit, accepted the torch from the Chief Guardian, and touched the tip of the flame to the edge of the reeds.
Knelt, then. Bowed his head before the statue.
The Guardians stepped back, disappearing into the shadows behind him. Quickly Dekkeret lost all awareness of their presence. Even the endless click-clack of the turning prayer-wheels outside the cave, which he still had been noticing only moments before, faded from the screen of his perceptions.
He was alone with the Pontifex Dvorn.
Now what, though? Pray to Dvorn? How could he do that? Dvorn was a myth, a creature of fable, a vague figure out of the early cantos of The Book of Changes. Even in the privacy of his own thoughts Dekkeret was unable to bring himself to pray to a myth. He was not really accustomed to prayer at all.
He had faith in the Divine, yes. How could he not? He was his mother’s son. But it was not a faith that ran very deep. Like everyone else—even Mandralisca, perhaps—he would make small requests of the Divine in casual conversation, and give thanks to the Divine for this or that favor granted. But all of that was just in the ordinary manner of speaking. To Dekkeret the Divine was the great creative force of the universe, a distant and incomprehensible power, hardly likely to pay attention to the trifling individual requests of any one creature of that universe. Neither the urgent prayers of the Coronal Lord of Majipoor nor the panicky cries of a frightened bilantoon pursued by a ravening haigus in the forests would stir the special mercy of the Divine, who had brought all creatures into being for purposes beyond the knowing of mortal beings, and had left them to make their own way throughout their lives, until the hour had come for them to be recalled to the Source.
But still—he felt that something was happening here—something strange—
The wreath was burning now, sending up flickering bluish-purple flames and twisting coils of dark smoke. A sweet fragrance that reminded Dekkeret of the aroma of the pale golden wine of Stoienzar filled his nostrils. He breathed deeply of it. It seemed the proper thing to do. And as it flooded down into his lungs a potent dizziness came over him.
He stared for an endless timeless time at the serene stone face that loomed there before him. Stared at that wondrous face, stared, stared, stared. And suddenly it seemed necessary for him to close his eyes.
And now it seemed to him that he heard a voice within his head, one that spoke not with words but with abstract patterns of sensation. Dekkeret could not have translated any of it into specific phrases; but he was certain that there was some sort of conceptual meaning there even so, and a definite sense of oracular power. Whoever, whatever, was speaking to his mind had recognized him as Dekkeret of Normork, Coronal Lord of Majipoor, who one day would be Pontifex in the direct line of succession from Dvorn.
And it was telling him that great labors lay before him, and at the end of those labors he was destined to bring about a transformation of the commonwealth, a change in the world nearly as great as the one that Dvorn himself had worked when he brought into being the system of Pontifical government. The nature of that change was not made clear. But it would be he himself, the voice seemed to indicate, he, Dekkeret of Normork, who would work that great transformation.
What was streaming into his mind had the force of true revelation. Its force was overwhelming. Dekkeret remained motionless for what might have been weeks or months or years, bowed down before the statue, letting it fill his soul.
After a time the power of it began to ebb. He no longer sensed any substance to what he felt. He was still in contact, somehow, with the statue, but what was emanating from it now had become nothing more than a far-off inchoate reverberation that went echoing off into the recesses of his mind, boum, boum, boum, a sound that was emphatic and powerful and somehow significant, but which carried with it no meaning that he could understand. It came less and less frequently and then not at all.
He opened his eyes.
The wreath was nearly burned, now. The slim metal rings that once had bound it lay scattered amidst a thin, acrid-smelling sprinkling of ash.
Boum, once again. And after a time, again, boum. And then no more. But Dekkeret remained where he was, kneeling before the statue of Dvorn, unable or perhaps just unwilling to rise just yet.
It was all very strange, he thought: coming in here feeling like an idiot for taking part in such mummery, and then, as the event unfolded, finding himself overcome by something very close to religious awe.
As his mind began to clear he found himself reflecting on what a weird journey this trip across the continent had been. The oracle trees of Shabikant that had spoken to him, perhaps, at the moment of sunset. The astrologer in the marketplace of Thilambaluc who had taken that single look into Dinitak’s eyes and fled in horror. And now this. Mystery upon mystery upon mystery, a procession of puzzling omens and forebodings. He was out of his depth here. Suddenly Dekkeret longed to leave this place, to move onward to the coast and join up with Prestimion, good sturdy skeptical Prestimion, who would explain all this to him in rational terms. But still—still—he was held spellbound by what he had just experienced, that feeling of overwhelming awe, that eerie silent wordless voice tolling in his brain.
When he emerged from the cave it was obvious that Fulkari and Dinitak were able to tell at a glance that something unusual had happened to him in there. They came quickly to his side the way one goes to a man who seems to be about to topple to the ground. Dekkeret shook them away, insisting that he was all right. Fulkari, looking worried, asked him what had happened in the cave, but his only response was a shrug. It was not anything he wanted to talk about so soon, not with her, not with anyone. What was there to say? How could he explain something that he barely understood himself? And even that, he thought, was inaccurate. It had been, in fact, something that he had not understood at all.
11
“This very room,” said Prestimion bleakly, looking out over the sea, “was our battle headquarters in the campaign against Dantirya Sambail. Dekkeret, Dinitak, Maundigand-Klimd and my mother and I right here, with the Barjazid helmet, while you two were out in the jungle, closing in on his camp. But we were still young then, eh? Now we are these many years older, and we must fight that war all over again, it seems. How my soul rebels against the thought! How I boil with anger at those mischievous monstrous men who refuse to let the world dwell in peace!”
From behind him came the flat, broad, Piliplok-accented voice of Gialaurys: “We destroyed the master, my lord, and we will destroy the lackeys as well.”
“Yes. Yes. Of course we will. But what a filthy waste, fighting yet another war! How wearisome! How needless!” Then Prestimion managed a thin smile.—“And you really must stop calling me ‘my lord,’ Gialaurys. I know it’s an old habit, but I remind you I am Coronal no longer. The title is ‘your majesty,’ if you must. Everyone else seems to have learned that by now. Or simply ‘Prestimion’ will do, between you and me.”
“It is very hard for me to remember these courtly niceties,” Gialaurys said in a sour growling tone. His wide meaty-jowled face, ever innocent of deception of any kind, showed his annoyance plainly. “My mind is not as keen as it once was, you know, Prestimion.” And from another corner of the room came the sly chuckle of Septach Melayn.
It was a week, now, since the Pontifical party had made the ocean crossing from the Isle of Sleep to the Alhanroel mainland for Prestimion’s intende
d rendezvous with Lord Dekkeret. The Coronal himself was still well up the coast, according to the latest word—somewhere a little way south of Alaisor, in the vicinity of Kikil or Kimoise—but was heading toward Stoien city as quickly as possible. Another day or two, perhaps, and he would be here.
The three of them had gathered this afternoon in one of the lesser chambers of the royal suite atop the Crystal Pavilion, which was the tallest building in Stoien city, rising high up above the heart of that lovely tropical port. A two-hundred-foot-long wall of continuous windows afforded spectacular views from every room, the city and all its startling multitude of pedestals and towers on one side, the immense glass-blue breast of the Gulf of Stoien on the other.
This was one of the gulfside rooms. For the past ten minutes Prestimion had stood by that great window, staring fiercely out to sea as though he could reach all the way to Zimroel and strike Mandralisca and his Five Lords dead with his glaring eyes alone. But of course Zimroel, unthinkably far off in the west, was beyond the range of even the most terrible of glances. He wondered how high this building would have to be in order to let him actually see that far. As high as Castle Mount, he suspected. Higher.
All he could see from here was water and more water, curving away into infinity. That distant point of brightness on the horizon—could it be, Prestimion wondered, the Isle of the Lady, from which he had so recently come? Probably not. Probably even the Isle was too far to glimpse from here.
Once again he found it a burden to contemplate the vast size of Majipoor. The mere thought of it was a weight on his spirit. What madness it was to pretend that a planet so huge could be governed by just a couple of men in fancy robes sitting on splendid thrones! The thing that held the world together was the consent of the governed, who by voluntary choice yielded themselves up to the authority of the Pontifex and the Coronal. And that consent seemed to be breaking down now, at least in Zimroel. It would, apparently, need to be restored by military force. And, Prestimion asked himself, just what sort of consent was that?
Prestimion’s mood had been prevailingly dark for days, a darkness that rarely left him more than moments at a time. He could not tell how much of that he owed to the strain of so much recent travel, he who was finally being forced to admit that he was no longer young, and how much to the despair that he felt over the inevitability of a new war.
For there would be a war.
So he had told his mother weeks ago at the Isle of Sleep, and so he believed with every atom of his being. Mandralisca and his faction had to be eliminated, or the world would split asunder. The great final battle against the villainy that those people represented would be fought, if he had to lead the march on Ni-moya himself. But Prestimion hoped it would not come to that. Dekkeret is my sword now, is what he had told the Lady Therissa, and that was true enough. He himself longed for the peace of the Labyrinth. That thought astonished him even as it formed in his mind. But it was the truth, the Divine’s own truth.
A hand touched his shoulder from behind, the lightest and quickest of touches. “Prestimion—?”
“What is it, Septach Melayn?”
“Is time, I would like to suggest, for you to stop staring at the sea and come away from that window. Is time for a little wine, perhaps. A game of dice, even?”
Prestimion grinned. So many times, over the years, had Septach Melayn’s well-timed frivolity pulled him back from the brink of despondency!
“Dice! How fine that would be,” he said: “The Pontifex of Majipoor and his High Spokesman down on their knees on the floor of the royal suite like boys, rolling for the triple eyes, or the hand and the forks! Would anyone believe it?”
“I remember a time,” said Gialaurys, speaking as though to the empty air, “when Septach Melayn and I were playing tavern dice on the deck of the riverboat that was taking us up the Glayge from the Labyrinth after Korsibar had stolen the throne, and just as he rolled the double ten I looked up and there was the new star blazing in the sky, the blue-white one, so very bright, that for a time people called it Lord Korsibar’s Star. And Duke Svor came out on deck—ah, he was a slippery one, that little Svor!—and saw the star, and said, ‘That star is our salvation. It means the death of Korsibar and the rising of Prestimion.’ Which was the Divine’s own truth. That star is still shining brightly to this very time. I saw it just last night, high above, between Thorius and Xavial. Prestimion’s star! The star of your ascendance, it is, and it still shines! Look you for it tonight, your majesty, and it will speak to you and lift your heart.” Now he was facing directly toward the Pontifex. “I pray you, put all this gloom of yours aside, Prestimion. Your star is still there.”
“You are very kind,” said Prestimion gently.
He was more deeply touched than he could say. In the thirty years of his friendship with the massive, slow-moving, inarticulate Gialaurys he had never heard anything like such eloquence out of him.
But of course Septach Melayn had to puncture the moment. “Only a moment ago, Gialaurys, you told us your fine mind was losing its keen edge,” the swordsman said. “And yet here you are recalling a game of dice we played half a lifetime ago, and accurately quoting to us the exact words Duke Svor spoke that evening. Is this not most inconsistent of you, dear Gialaurys?”
“I remember what is important to me, Septach Melayn,” Gialaurys replied. “And so I recall things of half a lifetime ago more clearly than I do what I was served last night at dinner, or the color of the robe I wore.” And he glared at Septach Melayn as though, after all these decades of having been on the receiving end of the quicker man’s banter, he would gladly catch Septach Melayn up in his huge hands and snap his slender body in half. But it had ever been thus with those two.
Prestimion said, laughing now for the first time in much too long, “The wine is a good idea, Septach Melayn. But not, I think, the game of dice.” He crossed the room to the sideboard, where a few wine-flasks sat, and after a moment’s inner deliberation chose the creamy young golden wine of Stoien, that grew so old so fast it was never exported beyond the city of its manufacture. He poured out three bowls’ full, and they sat quietly for a while, slowly drinking that thick, rich, strong wine.
“If there is to be a war,” said Septach Melayn after a time, and there was an odd tension in his voice, “then I have a favor to ask of you, Prestimion.”
“There will be a war. We have no alternative but to eradicate those creatures.”
“Well, then, when the war begins,” Septach Melayn went on, “I trust you will permit me to play a part in it.”
“And me as well,” said Gialaurys quickly.
Prestimion did not find these requests at all surprising.
Of course he had no intention of granting them; but it pleased him that the fires of valor still burned so strongly in these two. Did they not understand, he wondered, that their fighting days were over?
Gialaurys, like so many big-bodied men of enormous physical strength, had never been famous for his suppleness or agility, though that had not mattered in his years as a warrior. But, as also tends to happen to many men of his build, he had thickened greatly with age, and he moved now in a terribly slow and careful way.
Septach Melayn, whip-thin and eternally limber, seemed as quick and lithe as he had been long ago, essentially unchanged by the years. But the network of fine lines around his penetrating blue eyes told a different story, and Prestimion suspected that that famous cascade of tumbling ringlets had more than a little white hair mixed now with the gold. It was hardly possible that he still could have the lightning-swift reflexes that had made him invincible in hand-to-hand combat.
Prestimion knew that the battlefield was no place for either of them these days, any more than it was for him.
Delicately he said, “The war, as I know you understand, will be Dekkeret’s to fight, not mine or yours. But he’ll be apprised of your offers. I know that he’ll want to draw on your skill and experience.”
Gialaurys chuckled heavily.
“I can see us entering into Ni-moya now, sweeping all opposition aside. What a day that will be, when we go marching six abreast up Rodamaunt Promenade! And it will have been my great pleasure personally to lead the troops north from Piliplok. The invasion army will land in Piliplok, of course.—And you know, Prestimion, what we rough men from Piliplok think of those soft Ni-moyans and their eternal pursuit of pleasure. What joy it will be for us to knock down their flimsy gates and march into their pretty city!” He rose and walked about the room, making such effeminate mincing gestures that a roar of delighted laughter came from Septach Melayn. “‘Shall we go to the Gossamer Galleria today to buy a fine robe, my dear?’” said Gialaurys in a high-pitched strangled voice. “‘And then, I think, dinner at the Narabal Island. The breast of gammigammil with thognis sauce, how I adore it! The Pidruid oysters! Oh, my dear—!’”
Prestimion too was holding his sides. This sort of performance was nothing that he would ever have expected from the gruff Gialaurys.
Septach Melayn said in a more serious way, when the merriment had subsided a little, “What do you think, Prestimion? Will Dekkeret really choose to land in Piliplok, as Gialaurys says? I think there are some difficulties in that.”
“There are difficulties in anything we do,” said Prestimion, and his mood grew grim again as he contemplated the realities of the war he was so passionately determined to launch.
It was a fine brave thing to cry out for an end, at long last, to the iniquities of the Sambailids and their venomous chief minister. But he had no idea of the true depth of the Five Lords’ support in Zimroel. Suppose it was already possible for Mandralisca to assemble an army of a million soldiers to defend the western continent against an attack by the Coronal? Or five million? How would Dekkeret raise an army big enough to meet such a force? How would the troops be transported to Zimroel? Would transporting that many men even be possible? And, if so, at what a cost? The armaments needed, the ships, the provisions—
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