“What they have in common is their feeling that Prestimion ought to be Coronal. And you also, I suppose.”
“I’ve made the starburst to you, my lord.”
“You would make it to these Skandars if you felt need of it.—What will you do now, Svor, with Prestimion in the vaults?”
“You said you would let him out in a day or two, my lord.”
“Or three or four. First I’ll want a starburst out of him too, Svor, and a little sincerity behind it.”
“He may be in the vaults a long while, then,” Svor said.
“So be it, then,” said Korsibar. “We can have only one Coronal at a time in this world.”
Svor said, after standing a moment in thought, “If it’s not your intent to release Prestimion shortly, my lord, and I suspect that it is not, then I ask your lordship’s permission to leave the Castle.”
“And go where? You have no estate anywhere, do you, Svor? Only the apartments I provided for you here, in the days of our friendship, is that right?”
“A small suite has also been set aside for me in Muldemar House. I would go there, I suppose.”
’To join Septach Melayn and Gialaurys, and conspire with them against me on Prestimion’s behalf?”
“I have no idea where Septach Melayn and Gialaurys have gone, my lord. I feel uncomfortable at the Castle now, is all, knowing that Prestimion is in chains somewhere beneath my feet, and that I myself am free only at your pleasure, which at any moment may be withdrawn. You say you love me, my lord: very well, let me go. Muldemar is a quiet pretty place, and the wine is good, and the Princess Therissa makes me feel welcome there. By your leave, my lord, I would go to Muldemar. I say nothing of conspiring against you.”
“But you will. I know that.”
“I say nothing of that, my lord.”
Korsibar tossed his beads aside and stretched both his arms across the table toward Svor in a gesture of surprising warmth and vulnerability. A flashing energy came briefly into his weary eyes. “Listen to me,” he said. “Go to Muldemar, if you like, Svor. You have my permission, and Farquanor will give you a scrip of safe-conduct, if you ask him. I would never do you harm. Do you understand that, Svor? We were friends once, and in the name of that friendship I tell you now, I would never do you harm. But do me no harm either. I am Coronal, not Prestimion. That has already been decided. Do me no treasons, Svor. Conspire me no conspiracies. And if one should spring up anyway, I pray you, Svor, bring it to my ear. If not out of some vestige of affection for the friendship that once existed between us, then for the loyalty that you owe me as your king, and for your love for this world of ours of Majipoor. For Prestimion to make war against me for the throne would do irreparable damage to all the world, whichever one of us were to emerge wearing the crown.”
“I have no doubt of that, my lord,” said Svor. He made the starburst again, unasked. “And I thank you for your many kindnesses to me, past and present. May I go?”
Korsibar dismissed him with a weary wave of his hand. Svor lost no time removing himself from the Coronal’s presence.
2
After a long and arduous journey by foot down from the summit of the Mount, Septach Melayn arrived grimy and ragged and footsore at Muldemar House, where news of Prestimion’s incarceration had already come, and was conveyed at once to one of the guest apartments. There he bathed and lightly supped and took some wine, and changed into a fresh doublet and hose that belonged to Abrigant, Prestimion’s second brother, who was nearly as tall as he was himself. Afterward in the great hall of the house, where heavy red draperies closed them in on all sides, Septach Melayn gave Prestimion’s mother and all his brothers such news as he had, which was very little: only that the prince and Korsibar had had hot words at a private meeting, and Korsibar had clapped him straightaway into the Sangamor tunnels. That did not come as news to them.
“It was little use our staying,” he told them. “Korsibar would only have put us away in chains also.”
“You did well to flee while you could,” agreed the Princess Therissa. “But this is very rash of Korsibar, so shamefully to detain a great prince of the realm this way. Can’t he see how this high-handedness threatens all the other lords of the Castle?”
“He gave no thought to what he was doing, I think. Svor saw the picture clearly, as so often he does: is a weakness in Korsibar’s soul, said Svor, will make him strike of a sudden where no strike is called for, sheerly out of the fear that’s in him. So he was ready to lash out overseverely, at any provocation Prestimion might give. And I think Prestimion may well have given him one.”
“Of what sort?” the Princess Therissa asked.
“Korsibar did offer Prestimion a Council seat, or some such high post as that, at that meeting between them in the throne-room: this much we know. And Prestimion, I would wager, did angrily throw the appointment back at him like a rotting fish.”
“Prestimion would have done that, yes,” said the warlike brother Abrigant, with glee in his eyes.
“Ah, was not wise to do, when Korsibar sits so high, and fears Prestimion so much,” said Septach Melayn. “But Prestimion’s more impulsive these days than he was before, and sometimes too fiery, to his great cost.”
“There’s always been hot fire in him,” said the Princess Therissa, “that with great effort he keeps banked and within its bounds; but it must have been too much for him to hold his control, seeing Korsibar on Lord Confalume’s throne, and deigning to give a mere Council seat to him whose seat should have been that same throne.”
Septach Melayn nodded. “You have it precisely, milady. We warned Prestimion not to go to the meeting at all, for it would only compromise and endanger him; or if he did, to withhold any immediate answer to whatever offer might come, but say he wanted to take counsel at Muldemar House over whether to accept it or no. That would have bought him a little time. Yet I think he could not hold his temper, Prestimion. It must have galled him even to make the starburst to Korsibar, or to bend the knee and call him ‘my lord.’ Yes. That’s where it all broke down, right there, I think right at the very beginning, when the homage was due.”
“I agree. He would never kneel gladly to Korsibar,” said Prestimion’s brother Taradath.
“No,” said Septach Melayn. “That he would not. His anger is too great, and his pain.”
“Pain?” asked the Princess Therissa.
“Oh, yes, milady. Prestimion is in terrible pain over the loss of the crown. You’d never know it, were you talking with him: is calm and easy, takes a philosophical approach. But within him all is wrath and fire.” Septach Melayn held forth his wine-bowl, and Taradath filled it brimming. “Korsibar will do no real harm to Prestimion, I think. Is full of confusion and uncertainty, Korsibar is, finding himself suddenly king who never should have been there. Follows this one’s advice and then that one’s, having no clear path of his own in mind. But I think his heart is warm toward Prestimion despite all, and would not ever bring himself to injure him. A few days more and he’ll see there’s no sense in keeping him in the vaults, and will let him come forth.”
“The Divine grant you be right in that,” the Princess Therissa said.
“Korsibar’s done him plenty of injury already, by stealing the throne from him,” said Abrigant. “I’d have lost my temper too, standing there before Korsibar and expected to make starbursts to him.”
“Prestimion should have had a knife with him,” said the fierce youngest brother, Teotas, “and gone up the steps of the throne and cut the thieving Korsibar’s throat with it!”
“You are not the first to suggest something of that sort,” Septach Melayn said, smiling. “Which reminds me: has any word come here from Gialaurys? We were separated as we left the Castle. This place was where we agreed to meet.”
“Nothing,” said the Princess Therissa.
“And Svor? From him, anything?”
She shook her head again. But Prince Taradath said, “Not so, Mother. Word has arrived wit
hin the hour from Duke Svor, who says that he is safe and has permission from Lord Korsibar to leave the Castle, and will be coming shortly to Muldemar House. He says there’s no news of Prestimion but he has strong reason to believe Korsibar has no thought of taking his life.”
Septach Melayn tapped the dark obsidian tabletop with pleasure. “Svor safe! So Korsibar’s not forgotten his old love for his slippery little friend of former days. This is good news: means, perhaps, that Korsibar’s softening after his burst of wrath, and Prestimion’s release will not be far behind. But I fear for Gialaurys even so. Is too quick to seek a battle, that one, and may have taken on more than even he could handle on the way to the Castle gate.”
But just then came a servant at the door, with word of another guest at Muldemar House; and it was Gialaurys, looking even more threadbare than Septach Melayn had been at his own arrival a little while earlier, and with a great swollen purplish welt down the left side of his face. He seemed cheerful enough, though, such as cheerful was to a man of Gialaurys’s brooding nature. He embraced Septach Melayn with bone-cracking joy and downed three bowls of ruby wine running within the first ten minutes of his presence there.
Septach Melayn told him of Svor’s message, and asked Gialaurys of his escape from the Castle. That had been easily enough accomplished, said Gialaurys, except that he had found the approach to the Gossif gate too thick with guardsmen, and had gone instead around to the Halanx side, where guards had had time to assemble also and were waiting for him. So there had been a brawl, and he feared that he had returned a few of the guardsmen to the Source, which he regretted, but they would not give him a free path and so had left him no choice. “You know the long-nosed lieutenant of the guards, Himbergaze?” Gialaurys asked. “I knocked him over the side of Canaberu Keep, and he made a very loud landing below. Will not, I think, be do much guarding again. That’s how I got this.” He tapped the great welt on his cheek.
“He struck you in the face?” Septach Melayn asked.
Gialaurys chuckled. “The other way round. I butted him with my head as he came at me to grapple. Went flying up all amazed, and over the parapet’s edge. I wish I’d done that to Farholt when we wrestled at the Pontifex’s games.” He rose and surveyed the tatters of his clothing unhappily. “On my way down the Mount I came through the thorn forest of Quisquis: not a pleasant route. Look at me now!”
“This is Prince Abrigant’s doublet I’m wearing,” said Septach Melayn, with a glance about at Prestimion’s three willowy brothers. “My journey here left me on the ragged side also. But I think there’s no clothing here vast enough for you, my friend. Perhaps one of the hostlers can fetch you a spare tent that milady’s seamstresses can stitch into trousers for you.”
“You are ever the jolly one,” Gialaurys said, with no jot of amusement in his voice.
But the Princess Therissa told them then that new garments could be fashioned for him swiftly enough; and they were, by morning. By morning, also, Duke Svor was at the gates of Muldemar House, having come at the head of a caravan of five pack-mounts, bringing a load of goods, among them a welcome array of clothing that he had fetched from the rooms of Gialaurys and Septach Melayn.
He told them of his conversation with Korsibar, and of his hopes of Prestimion’s imminent release.
“What are they saying at the Castle,” asked Septach Melayn, “about Korsibar’s arresting him? What does Serithorn say, or Oljebbin?”
“Not very much,” Svor replied. “You understand, I lost little time in getting myself away from there, and didn’t go about the place discussing the matter with a great many folk. But from what I did hear, it seems everyone is too astonished to speak out, and is pretending that all is proceeding in ordinary fashion, while waiting to see what Korsibar does next.”
“As it has been since this thing began,” said Gialaurys darkly. “Korsibar snatches the crown, and no one speaks out against him, not even Confalume himself, everybody waiting timidly to see what happens next. So Korsibar comes to the Castle and takes possession of the government unchallenged. Now Korsibar throws Prestimion in the dungeon, and it’s the same. Are they all such cowards? Why doesn’t Oljebbin rise up, or Gonivaul, or anyone, and cry out against these unlawful follies?”
Septach Melayn said, “You sat here in this very house and listened to the stirring words of the brave Oljebbin, and the fearless Gonivaul, and the courageous Serithorn too, with your own ears. One after another they told us they would wait and see, and observe the doings of Korsibar very carefully before taking any position, and make no moves against him until it was appropriate to do so. “We will do nothing hasty or rash,’ said Serithorn, or was it Gonivaul? I forget which one. But it was the same words out of all their mouths.”
“They promised to support Prestimion if he rose against Korsibar,” Gialaurys said.
“In a lukewarm pigeonhearted way,” said Svor. “Hedged all around with ifs and buts and maybes, and nothing said about supporting Prestimion if Korsibar rose against him. Ah, what do you think, Gialaurys? That those feeble-spirited comfort-loving old men will stand up and bluster and rage against the detention of Prestimion, when Korsibar need do nothing more than snap his fingers and they’ll be down in the Sangamor tunnels themselves a moment later? Korsibar holds all the advantage. The high lords fear him and mistrust each other. In all the land, there’s only one aside from Prestimion who dares to stand up to Korsibar and who might help us wrest Prestimion free of Korsibar’s grasp. Of course, he’s no angel himself.”
“The Procurator, you mean?” said Septach Melayn.
“Who else? If we’re to make any sort of opposition to Korsibar, it can only be done with the help of Dantirya Sambail. He’s Prestimion’s kinsman, after all: who better to demand Prestimion’s release? There’s a powerful man, with powerful armies at his back, and wealth and determination besides, and five times as clever as Korsibar as well.”
“And also much personal charm and sweetness of soul,” said Septach Melayn. “Not to mention his great beauty and love of small animals. What a fine ally he would be, Svor!”
“In any case, Dantirya Sambail is far out at sea at this moment, heading toward Zimroel,” Gialaurys said. “Even if he turned around the moment he landed at Piliplok, it would be months before he could get all the way back here. Assuming he would even want to do it.”
“Ah, no,” Svor said. “He’s not at sea at all. Is my understanding he went no more than halfway to Alaisor port, and word reached him of Prestimion’s being taken captive. Canceled his voyage at once and began to march immediately back toward the Mount.”
“You know this for fact?” Septach Melayn asked.
“I know nothing for fact except the number of my fingers and toes,” responded Svor, “and there are days when even that is in doubt. But I heard it from reliable people in Muldemar city, as I was coming through there this morning, that Dantirya Sambail with all his horde of followers is heading this way. Is it so? I could cast some runes on it, but you’d not believe those findings either, eh, Septach Melayn? So all we can do is wait. Here sit we, and Dantirya Sambail will come, or else he will not. I’ve told you what we know.”
“What price will he ask, do you think, for getting Prestimion out of that dungeon?” Gialaurys said. “He does nothing without exacting a good price.”
Septach Melayn said, “A good point. Prestimion will be greatly beholden to him, and the reckoning will be an expensive one. If Prestimion ever comes to power in the world, Dantirya Sambail will sit at his right hand. Well, and nothing can be done about it, unless we can magic Prestimion out of that cellar without the Procurator’s help, and we can’t. Here sit we, as Svor says, and wait to watch what unfolds.”
“It is a pleasant place to sit, at least,” said Svor. “And the wine is very good.”
* * *
The days passed, and news of varying sorts came daily to Muldemar House, not all of it totally trustworthy. Prince Prestimion, they were told, would be released on S
eaday next; no, it would be Moonday; no, Threeday. But Prestimion was not released, not on Threeday nor on Fourday, nor on any day at all. From Akbalik came word that Prince Serithorn had visited Prestimion in the vaults, and that Prestimion seemed healthy enough, though much amazed at Korsibar’s temerity at holding him prisoner like that, and unhappy about the quality and quantity of the fare, which had given him a pale and somewhat haggard look. As for Lord Korsibar, he had been glimpsed very little of late: he kept to his private chambers, and Navigorn and Farquanor and Mandrykarn were often seen going to him, but life at court seemed to be at a standstill during this strange time of crisis. The Lady Thismet too was rarely seen in public. A tale had come forth, from one lady-of-honor to another and then through a circuitous chain of gossipers, that Thismet and her brother Lord Korsibar were estranged over some matter and that the breach was a deep and serious one.
“I have here a letter from my friend the Lady Heisse Vaneille of Bailemoona saying that the quarrel is over Prestimion,” reported Svor. “It seems the Lady Thismet has begged most tearfully for Prestimion to be set free, declaring that Prestimion is very close to her heart and she would not have him locked away like this. Which so infuriated the Coronal that he threatened to have her locked away too, in some other part of the tunnels.”
“They will all be chained up in the Sangamor if this continues,” said Septach Melayn with a grin. He gave Svor a questioning look. “Do you know anything about this, you man of the ladies? I mean this sudden affection that has sprung up between Thismet and Prestimion. It was my belief she detested him.”
“Anything’s possible, where men and women are concerned,” said Svor. “I tell you only what Heisse Vaneille told me.”
“A very reliable informant is she, this slut of yours?” Septach Melayn asked.
Svor peered sourly at the swordsman and said, “You do her a great injustice. She is a fine woman of the best family of Bailemoona. But let me continue my news, for there is more. The Pontifex Confalume has left the Castle to return to his duties in the Labyrinth.”
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