“Look you there, and see wonders,” broke in Septach Melayn, taking him by the arm and swinging him quickly about to face the crowned Korsibar on the Coronal’s seat and the bewildered and thunderstruck Confalume on the Pontifical throne beside him.
“What is this?” Prestimion asked in wonder.
Calmly Korsibar said, rising from his royal seat, “The Divine has spoken, Prestimion. Prankipin is dead and my father Confalume now is Pontifex, and I—” He touched his hand lightly to the crown resting on his brow. “I—”
“No!” Gialaurys bellowed. “This is thievery! Thievery! This thing will not be!” Holding his arms upraised and his fingers stiffly outthrust as though he meant to throttle Korsibar with his own hands, he began to move forward with his head lowered like a rumbling bull, only to find himself confronted by the halberds of the front row of Korsibar’s guards.
“Step back, Gialaurys,” Prestimion said in a low stern voice. And then, more sharply: “Back! Away from the throne!” And reluctantly Gialaurys gave ground.
Then, looking toward Korsibar, Prestimion said, with taut self-control, “You claim to be Coronal, is that it?”
“I am Coronal.”
To Confalume, Prestimion said in an equally quiet tone, “And this is acceptable to you, your majesty?”
Confalume’s lips moved but no words came out. He turned his hands outward and upward in a pathetic gesture of defeat and bewilderment.
Now Prestimion’s rage flared high. “What is this, Korsibar, have you put some spell on him?” he demanded fiercely. “He’s nothing more than a puppet!”
Farholt, stepping forward, said now with a shameless grin, “You will address him now as Lord Korsibar, prince.”
Prestimion looked stunned for a moment. Then he smiled, but the smile was a very thin one. “Lord Korsibar, then,” he said, quietly again, with a barely concealed tinge of mockery imparting an edge to his tone. “Was that properly spoken, Lord Korsibar?”
“I’ll kill him!” Gialaurys howled. “I’ll tear him apart!”
“You’ll do no such thing,” said Prestimion as the line of halberds bristled. He clamped his hand tight about Gialaurys’s thick wrist and held him firmly in his place. Smoothly, Septach Melayn moved in to press himself up against Gialaurys and restrain him on the other side.
Gialaurys trembled like a shackled titan, but remained where he was.
“Svor saw something very much like this in a dream,” Prestimion said in a low voice to Septach Melayn. “I laughed at him. But now we see it also.”
“This is not any dream, I fear,” Septach Melayn replied. “Or if it is, there’ll be no quick awakening from it for us.”
“No. And we appear to be friendless in this room today. This is not any place for us to be just now.” Prestimion looked across to Korsibar. The world was whirling wildly on its axis, but he forced himself to plant his feet firmly and stand staunchly upright. To Korsibar he said, keeping all that he felt at this dark moment under the tightest of reins and speaking through barely parted lips, “In this time of great loss and mourning, I would prefer to reflect in solitude on these great events. I ask your gracious permission to withdraw from the hall, your—lordship.”
“Granted.”
“Come, then,” Prestimion said sharply to Gialaurys, who still looked stunned and numb with fury. “Out of here, now, quickly. And you also, Septach Melayn. Come. Come.” And added, under his breath: “While we still can.” Prestimion’s fingers flicked out toward Korsibar in the starburst sign, which he performed so swiftly that it was little more than a parody of the gesture. Then he swung about and went quickly with his two companions from the room.
II. The Book of Lord Korsibar
1
“Did you see his face?” Thismet cried. It was the dazzling hour of triumph. “Like a stone slab, it was. No expression at all, and absolutely gray. A dead man’s face.” And she squared her shoulders and thrust out her chin and did a scathing imitation of Prestimion’s stolid exit from the Court of Thrones, muttering gruffly in a decent counterfeit of Prestimion’s strong tenor, “ ‘Come, then, Septach Melayn, Gialaurys. Out of here, while we can.’ ”
The room shook with laughter. Then Farholt jumped up. Moving stiffly, for he was still badly battered and bruised from that horrendous wrestling match with Gialaurys, he shambled ponderously back and forth before them in the clumsy dangle-armed posture of a great ape of the Gonghar Mountains, pummeling his chest and grunting in a fair semblance of Gialaurys’s dark rumbling voice, “Til kill him! I’ll tear him apart!’”
A couple of others began now to mimic Septach Melayn’s dainty walk, comically exaggerating his feline litheness and overfastidious precision of movement. “Enough of this,” said Korsibar, though he was laughing just as heartily as any of the others. “It’s bad grace to mock one’s fallen rivals.”
“A good point, my lord,” said Count Farquanor unctuously. “Wisely put, my lord.” And the others echoed him: “Wisely put, my lord. A good point, my lord. A very good point, my lord.” The temporary quarters of the new Coronal had been established in the generous suite on the imperial level of the Labyrinth where the former Prince Korsibar had resided since his arrival; and here the new Lord Korsibar was holding court for the first time on the afternoon of his assumption of the crown, seated on an improvised throne while the members of his immediate entourage clustered about him to pay him homage.
One by one they had come forward and knelt and made the starburst sign to him: the Lady Thismet first, and then the brothers Farquanor and Farholt together, and Navigorn and Mandrykarn and Venta and the rest. And Sanibak-Thastimoon as well; for Korsibar was Coronal Lord of the Su-Suheris people of Majipoor now too, and of all the Ghayrogs and Liimen and Hjorts and Vroons and Skandars as well, and even the shapeshifting Metamorphs of the distant Piurifayne forests.
“My lord,” they said over and over, greatly relishing the sound of it, interspersing it between every third word they addressed to him: “My lord, my lord, my lord, my lord.” And the new Coronal heard and graciously smiled and nodded his acknowledgment of their deference, just as he had seen his father doing since he was a small child. Korsibar had had a better education in being Coronal, perhaps, than anyone who had ever come to the throne before him, at least in the matter of understanding the formalities of the post; for he had had an entire lifetime to study a Coronal’s deportment, beginning at his father’s knee.
Count Farquanor, eyes bright with the pleasure of victory, approached him and said, “The word has gone out everywhere, my lord, of what has occurred here today. They will all learn of it soon, in every city, on every continent.”
He waited, half crouching beside Korsibar as if expecting to be tossed a coin. Korsibar knew what was in Farquanor’s mind: he yearned to be named High Counsellor to the Coronal, which was the highest rank at the Castle below that of Coronal itself. Very likely Korsibar would so name him, when the time for making appointments had come: but it was not yet that time, not this soon. One did not discard the former Coronal’s close advisers so hastily: especially when one had come to the throne as irregularly as he had. And his reign was still only in its first moments, after all.
Even now, the news of the change of government was only just beginning to spread—erupting outward upon the world from the claustrophobic confines of the Labyrinth like a column of fiery lava spouting from the black ashy cone of a volcano. Of course it had come by this time to the Castle, where the myriad officials of the Coronal’s administrative staff were doubtless looking at one another with astonishment and asking each other in helpless dumbstruck repetition, “Korsibar? How could it have been Korsibar?” And to the fifty glorious cities of the Mount that lay spread out below the Castle, High Morpin of the mirror-slides and juggernauts, and Normork of the great stone wall, and Tolingar where Lord Havilbove’s miraculous garden was, and Kazkaz, Sipermit, Frangior, Halanx, Prestimion’s own city of Muldemar, and all the rest of them.
And the
astonishing news would be continuing onward and onward across the whole continent of Alhanroel, through the teeming valley of the Glayge and the innumerable stilt-legged villages scattered along the silver immensity of Lake Roghoiz, and out to Bailemoona and Alaisor and Stoien and Sintalmond and the airy towns that clung to the grotesque spires of the Ketheron district, and those of the golden hills of Arvyanda, and across the sea to the tremendous cities of Zimroel, the far western continent, cities that were more the stuff of myth and legend than real places to those who dwelled at the Castle—Ni-moya and Til-omon, Pidruid and Piliplok, Narabal, Khyntor, Sagamalinor, Dulorn. And to parched fiery Suvrael also, and the Isle of the Lady. Everywhere. Everywhere.
Mandrykarn, approaching Korsibar now, said, “If I may ask your majesty—”
“No, not ‘your majesty,’ ” Farquanor interrupted. “ ‘Your lordship.’ ‘Your majesty’ is what one would say to the Pontifex.”
“A hundred thousand pardons!” said Mandrykarn with exaggerated punctiliousness, drawing himself up stiffly and looking displeased. Mandrykarn was deep-shouldered and substantial, a man nearly as robustly built as Korsibar himself, and he scowled down at the wiry little Farquanor in unconcealed annoyance. Then, to Korsibar again: “If I may ask your lordship a question—?”
“Of course, Mandrykarn.”
“What is to be done about the games? ”
“Why, we’ll continue them where we left off, of course. But first we’ll have the funeral for old Prankipin, with all the pomp and grandeur this gloomy place can muster, and then some sort of formal installation ceremony, I suppose, for my father and myself. And then—”
“If I may, my lord—” Mandrykarn said.
Both Farquanor and Korsibar looked surprised at that, for Mandrykarn had interrupted the Coronal in mid-sentence, and one was not supposed to do that. But Korsibar quickly smiled to show that he had taken no offense. They were all very new at this business: it was too early to be finicky over protocol.
Korsibar signaled Mandrykarn to continue.
“It occurs to me, lordship, that it might be the part of wisdom to abandon the remainder of the games and begin our journey to Castle Mount as quickly as possible. We can hold more games once we’re there. We have no way of knowing what Prestimion’s next move may be, my lord. If he should return to the Castle before we do, and raises a dispute against your assumption of power—”
“Do you think Prestimion would do such a thing?” Korsibar asked. “Not I. He respects the law. Under the law, I am Coronal now.”
“Nevertheless, my lord,” Mandrykarn said. “With all respect for your judgment, my lord. If he chooses to challenge the assumption on the grounds that a Coronal’s son may not become Coronal after him—”
“That’s not law,” said Farquanor sharply. “That’s merely precedent.”
“Precedent that has hardened into law over the past seven thousand years,” replied Mandrykarn.
“I stand with Farquanor and his lordship in this,” said Navigorn of Hoikmar. “If there’s precedent here, it’s that the outgoing Coronal chooses and ratifies the ascendance of his successor. Prestimion may argue that the element of choice on the part of Lord Confalume may have been defective, but certainly ratification was there: for did not Confalume sit willingly down on the Pontifical throne beside the crowned Lord Korsibar—”
“Willingly?” Farquanor asked.
“Well, more or less willingly, let us say. And thereby giving implicit recognition to Lord Korsibar by the very fact of making no protest over the assumption.”
There was something of a stir in the room at Navigorn’s words, not so much over their content as for the fact that he had said them at all. The dark-haired brawny Navigorn was a man of tireless strength and formidable skill in the hunt; but he had never demonstrated much gift for abstract thought before. Nor, for that matter, had Mandrykarn. Korsibar hid his amusement over this sudden dispute behind his hand. Was the coming of the new regime going to transform all his rough-and-ready hunting-comrades into lawyers?
“Still,” said Farholt, glowering out from under his massive brows, “what we think the law says and what Prestimion thinks may not be the same. I’m with Mandrykarn here: I vote for calling off the rest of the games and getting ourselves back to the Castle as fast as we can.”
Korsibar looked toward the Lady Thismet. “Sister?”
“Yes. Cancel the games. We have more important things to do now. As for Prestimion, he’s no danger to us. We control the army. We control the machinery of government. What action can he take against us? Point a finger at you, my lord, and say that you have stolen his crown? It never was his crown. And now it’s yours. It’ll remain that way, my lord, no matter how Prestimion feels about today’s events.”
“I would go so far as to offer Prestimion a post in the new government,” said Farquanor thoughtfully. “To neutralize him—to minimize his resentment—and also to ensure his loyalty.”
“Why not High Counsellor?” Mandrykarn suggested, and everyone laughed, all but Farquanor.
Korsibar said, “Yes. A shrewd idea. I’ll send for Prestimion in a day or two and ask him to take some Council post. Certainly he’s worthy of one, and if he’s not too proud to accept, it’ll give us a way of keeping a close eye on him. As for the games, Thismet’s right: we won’t resume them, not here. There’ll be time for chariot-racing and jousting later on, at the castle. We bury Prankipin; we consecrate the new Pontifex; we do whatever urgent business must be done and we leave for the Mount. So be it.”
“What about your mother, lordship?” Farquanor said.
Korsibar gave him a baffled look. “My mother? What about my mother?”
“She now becomes the Lady of the Isle, my lord.”
“By the Divine!” Korsibar cried. “That slipped my mind entirely! The mother of the Coronal—”
“The mother of the Coronal, yes,” said Farquanor. “When the Coronal happens to have a living mother, that is, and now that’s the case again. So at last old Aunt Kunigarda gets her pension, and the Lady Roxivail will be the Lady of us all.”
“The Lady Roxivail,” said Mandrykarn in amazement. “What will she say when she finds out, I’d like to know!”
“And who’ll be brave enough to be the one to tell her?” Thismet asked, fighting back a giggle.
The Lady Roxivail was no one’s idea of a fitting Lady of the Isle of Sleep. Lord Confalume’s beautiful, vain, and imperious wife had separated from the Coronal not long after the birth of her two children and withdrawn to the luxury of her shimmering palace far to the south on the tropic isle of Shambettirantil. Surely never even in her most grandiose dreams had she imagined that the responsibility of becoming a Power of the Realm would ever descend upon her. And yet—law and precedent—the Ladyship would indeed have to be offered to her—
“Well,” Korsibar said, “we can reserve that problem for a later discussion. Someone who knows more history than I do can tell us tomorrow how long a period of transition is usually allowed between one Lady and the next, and Kunigarda can continue to send dreams to the world until we figure out what to do about replacing her.”
“My lord,” Farquanor went on, “you will also need to deal quickly with the problem of the senior peers.”
“And what problem is that? It seems to me you’re finding a great many problems very quickly, Farquanor.”
“I mean ensuring their loyalty, lordship. Which involves assuring them of your love and confirming them in their continued posts.”
“For the time being, at least,” said Mandrykarn.
“For the time being, yes,” Farquanor said, eyes glinting with sudden covetousness. “But it would be rash to make them insecure in any way at the outset. I would summon your kinsman Duke Oljebbin within the hour, my lord, and the princes Gonivaul and Serithorn immediately after, and tell them that their role in the government is unchanged.”
“Good. See that they’re invited here.”
“And finally
—”
There was a knock, and a servitor appeared. “My lord, the Procurator Dantirya Sambail is here and seeks admission.”
Korsibar gave Thismet an uneasy glance, and looked to Farquanor next and saw that he was frowning also. But he could hardly turn the powerful Procurator away from his door.
“Let him come in,” Korsibar said.
Dantirya Sambail was still clad in the splendiferous golden armor in which he had attended the gathering in the Court of Thrones, but he held his green-plumed brazen helmet now under his arm in what was perhaps a sort of gesture of deference to the new king. His great freckled ruddy-faced head, topped with its fluffy corona of orange hair, jutted bluntly before him into the room like a battering ram as he made his striding entrance.
He took for himself the place directly in front of Korsibar, which required Farquanor and Mandrykarn to give ground slightly, and stood for a long moment, face-to-face with the new Coronal, staring at him as though openly taking the measure of him, not as subject before king, but as one equal prince to another.
“So,” he said finally. “It does seem that you actually are Coronal now.”
“So it seems, and so I am,” said Korsibar, pointedly looking toward the floor in front of Dantirya Sambail.
But the Procurator ignored the unambiguous instruction to kneel and render up the sign of homage. “What has your father had to say about this, I wonder?” he asked.
“You saw my father sit down beside me in the Court of Thrones. There’s implicit recognition in that.”
“Ah. Implicit.”
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