“A very important event, yes,” said Aximaan Threysz, nodding. “Yes. A very important event.” She felt a certain discomfort over the presence of so many people around her. It was months since she had last been in town. She rarely left the house any longer, but spent nearly all her days sitting in her bedroom with her back to the window, never once looking toward the plantation. But tonight Heynok had insisted. A very important event, she kept saying.
“Look! There he is, mother!”
Aximaan Threysz was vaguely aware that a human had stepped out on the platform, a short red-faced one with thick ugly black hair like the fur of an animal. That was strange, she thought, the way she had come in recent months to despise the look of humans, their soft flabby bodies, their pasty sweaty skins, their repellent hair, their weak watery eyes. He waved his arms about and began to speak in an ugly rasping voice.
“People of Prestimion Vale—my heart goes out to you in this moment of your trial—this darkest hour, this unexpected travail—this tragedy, this grief—”
So this was the important event, Aximaan Threysz thought. This noise, this wailing. Yes, undoubtedly important. Within moments she had lost the thread of what he was saying, but it was plainly important, because the words that wandered up from the platform to her had an important sound: “Doom . . destiny . . punishment . . transgression . . innocence . . shame . . deceit . . .” But the words, important though they might be, floated past her like little transparent winged creatures.
For Aximaan Threysz the last important event had already happened, and there would be no others in her life. After the discovery of the lusavender smut her fields had been the first to be burned. The agricultural agent Yerewain Noor, looking deeply grieved, making endless fluttery apologies, had posted a notice of labor levy in the town, tacking up the sign on the door of this same municipal hall where Aximaan Threysz sat now, and one Starday morning every able-bodied worker in Prestimion Vale had come to her plantation to carry out the torching. Spreading the fuel carefully on the perimeter, making long crosses of it. down the center of the fields, casting the firebrands—
And then Mikhyain’s land, and Sobor Simithot’s, and Palver’s, and Nitikkimal’s—
All gone, the whole Vale, black and charred, the lusavender and the rice. There would be no harvest next season. The silos would stand empty, the weighing bins would rust, the summer sun would shed its warmth on a universe of ashes. It was very much like a sending of the King of Dreams, Aximaan Threysz thought. You settled down for your two months of winter rest, and then into your mind came terrifying visions of the destruction of everything you had labored to create, and as you lay there you felt the full weight of the King’s spirit on your soul, squeezing you, crushing you, telling you, This is your punishment, for you are guilty of wrongdoing.
“How do we know,” the man on the platform said, “that the person we call Lord Valentine is indeed the annointed Coronal, blessed by the Divine? How can we be certain of this?”
Aximaan Threysz sat suddenly forward, her attention caught
“I ask you to consider the facts. We knew the Coronal Lord Voriax, and he was a dark-complected man, was he not? Eight years he ruled us, and he was wise, and we loved him. Did we not? And then the Divine in its inifinite unknowable mercy took him from us too soon, and word came forth from the Mount that his brother Valentine was to be our Coronal, and he too was a dark-complected man. We know that. He came amongst us on the grand processional—oh, no, not here, not to this province, but he was seen in Piliplok, he was seen in Ni-moya, he was seen in Narabal, in Til-omon, in Pidruid, and he was dark-complected, with shining black eyes and a black beard, and no doubt of it that he was brother to his brother, and our legitimate Coronal.
“But then what did we hear? A man with golden hair and blue eyes arose, and said to the people of Alhanroel, I am the true Coronal, driven from my body by witchery, and the dark one is an impostor. And the people of Alhanroel made the starburst before him and bowed themselves down and cried hail. And when we in Zimroel were told that the man we thought was Coronal was not Coronal, we too accepted him, and accepted his tale of witchery-changes, and these eight years he has had the Castle and held the government. Is that not so, that we took the golden-haired Lord Valentine in the place of the dark-haired Lord Valentine?”
“Why, this is treason pure and simple,” shouted the planter Nitikkimal, sitting close by Aximaan Threysz. “His own mother the Lady accepted him as true!”
The man on the platform glanced up into the audience. “Aye, the Lady herself accepted him, and the Pontifex as well, and all the high lords and princes of Castle Mount. I do not deny that. And who am I to say they are wrong? They bow their knees to the golden-haired king. He is acceptable to them. He is acceptable to you. But is he acceptable to the Divine, my friends? I ask you, look about yourselves! This day I journeyed through Prestimion Vale. Where are the crops? Why are the fields not green with rich growth? I saw ashes! I saw death! Look you, the blight is on your land, and it spreads through the Rift each day, faster than you can burn your fields and purge the soil of the deadly spores. There will be no lusavender next season. There will be empty bellies in Zimroel. Who can remember such a time? There is a woman here whose life has spanned many reigns, and who is replete with the wisdom of years, and has she ever seen such a time? I speak to you, Aximaan Threysz, whose name is respected throughout the province-—your fields were put to the torch, your crops were spoiled, your life is blighted in its glorious closing years—”
“Mother, he’s talking about you,” Heynok whispered sharply.
Aximaan Threysz shook her head uncomprehendingly. She had lost herself in the torrent of words. “Why are we here? What is he saying?”
“What do you say, Aximaan Threysz? Has the blessing of the Divine been withdrawn from Prestimion Vale? You know it has! But not by your sin, or the sin of anyone here! I say to you that it is the wrath of the Divine, falling impartially upon the world, taking the lusavender from Prestimion Vale and the milaile from Ni-moya and the stajja from Falkynkip and who knows what crop will be next, what plague will be loosed upon us, and all because a false Coronal—”
“Treason! Treason!”
“A false Coronal, I tell you, sits upon the Mount and falsely rules—a golden-haired usurper who—”
“Ah, has the throne been usurped again?” Aximaan Threysz murmured. “It was just the other year, when we heard tales of it, that someone had taken the throne wrongfully—”
“I say, let him prove to us that he is the chosen of the Divine! Let him come amongst us on his grand processional and stand before us and show us that he is the true Coronal! I think he will not do it. I think he cannot do it. And I think that so long as we suffer him to hold the Castle, the wrath of the Divine will fall upon us in ever more dreadful ways, until—”
“Treason!”
“Let him speak!”
Heynok touched Aximaan Threysz’s arm. “Mother, are you all right?”
“Why are they so angry? What are they shouting?”
“Perhaps I should take you home, mother.”
“I say, down with the usurper!”
“And I say, call the proctors, arraign this man for treason.”
Aximaan Threysz looked about her in confusion. It seemed that everyone was on his feet now, shouting. Such noise! Such uproar! And that strange smell in the air—that smell of damp burned things, what was that? It stung her nostrils. Why were they shouting so much?
“Mother?”
“We’ll begin putting in the new crop tomorrow, won’t we? And so we should go home now. Isn’t that so, Heynok?”
“Oh, mother, mother—”
“The new crop—”
“Yes,” Heynok said. “We’ll be planting in the morning. We should go now.”
“Down with all usurpers! Long life to the true Coronal!”
“Long life to the true Coronal!” Aximaan Threysz cried suddenly, rising to her feet. Her eyes flashed
; her tongue flickered. She felt young again, full of life and vigor. Into the fields at dawn tomorrow, spread the seeds and lovingly cover them, and offer the prayers, and—
No. No. No.
The mist cleared from her mind. She remembered everything. The fields were charred. They must lie fallow, the agricultural agent had said, for three more years, while the smut spores were being purged. That was the strange smell: the burned stems and leaves. Fires had raged for days. The rain stirred the odor and made it rise into the air. There would be no harvest this year, or the next, or the next.
“Fools,” she said.
“Who do you mean, mother?”
Aximaan Threysz waved her hand in a wide circle. “All of them. To cry out against the Coronal. To think that this is the vengeance of the Divine. Do you think the Divine wants to punish us that badly? We will all starve, Heynok, because the smut has killed the crop, and it makes no difference who is Coronal. It makes no difference at all. Take me home.”
“Down with the usurper!” came the cry again, and it rang in her ears like the tolling of a funeral bell as she strode from the hall.
ELIDATH SAID, looking carefully around the council room at the assembled princes and dukes, “The orders are in Valentine’s hand and signed with Valentine’s seal, and they are unmistakably genuine. The boy is to be raised to the principate at the earliest possible appropriate time.”
“And you think that time has come?” asked Divvis coldly.
The High Counsellor met Divvis’s angry gaze evenly. “I do.”
“By what do you judge?”
“His instructors tell me that he has mastered the essence of all the teachings.”
“So then he can name all the Coronals from Stiamot to Malibor in the correct order! What does that prove?”
“The teachings are more than merely lists of kings, Divvis, as I hope you have not forgotten. He has had the full training and he comprehends it. The Synods and Decretals, the Balances, the Code of Provinces, and all the rest: I trust you recall those things? He has been examined, and he is flawless. His understanding is deep and wise. And he has shown courage, too. In the crossing of the ghazan-tree plain he slew the malorn. Did you know that, Divvis? Not merely eluded it, but slew it. He is extraordinary.”
“I think that word is the right one,” said Duke Elzandir of Chorg. “I have ridden with him on the hunt, in the forests above Ghiseldorn. He moves quickly, and with a natural grace. His mind is alert. His wit is agile. He knows what gaps exist in his knowledge, and he takes pains to fill them. He should be elevated at once.”
“This is madness!” cried Divvis, slapping the flat of his hand several times angrily against the council-hall table. “Absolute raving madness!”
“Calmly, calmly,” Mirigant said. “Such shouting as this is unseemly, Divvis.”
“The boy is too young to be a prince!”
“And let us not forget,” the Duke of Halanx added, “that he is of low birth.” Quietly Stasilaine said, “How old is he, Elidath?”
The High Counsellor shrugged. “Twenty. Twenty-one, perhaps. Young, I agree. But hardly a child.”
“You called him ‘the boy’ yourself a moment ago,” the Duke of Halanx pointed out.
Elidath turned his hands palm upward. “A figure of speech and nothing more. He has a youthful appearance, I grant you. But that’s only because he’s so slight of build, and short of stature. Boyish, perhaps: but not a boy.”
“Not yet a man, either,” observed Prince Manganot of Banglecode.
“By what definition?” Stasilaine asked.
“Look about you in this room,” Prince Manganot said. “Here you see the definition of manhood. You, Stasilaine: anyone can see the strength of you. Walk as a stranger through the streets of any city, Stee, Normork, Bibiroon, simply walk through the streets, and people will automatically defer to you, having no notion of your rank or name. Elidath the same. Divvis. Mirigant. My royal brother of Dundilmir. We are men. He is not.”
“We are princes,” said Stasilaine, “and have been for many years. A certain bearing comes to us in time, from long awareness of our station. But were we like this twenty years ago?”
“I think so,” Manganot said.
Mirigant laughed. “I remember some of you when you were at Hissune’s age. Loud and braggartly, yes, and if that makes one a man, then you surely were men. But otherwise—ah, I think it is all a circular thing, that princely bearing comes of feeling princely, and we put it on ourselves as a cloak. Look at us in our finery, and then cover us in farmer’s clothes and set us down in some seaport of Zimroel, and who will bow to us then? Who will give deference?”
“He is not princely now and never will be,” said Divvis sullenly. “He is a ragged boy out of the Labyrinth, and nothing more than that.”
“I still maintain that we can’t elevate a stripling like that to our rank,” said Prince Manganot of Banglecode.
“They say that Prestimion was short of stature,” the Duke of Chorg remarked. “I think his reign is generally deemed to have been successful, nevertheless.”
The venerable Cantalis, nephew of Tyeveras, looked up suddenly out of an hour’s silence and said in amazement, “You compare him with Prestimion, Elzandir? What precisely is it that we are doing, then? Are we creating a prince or choosing a Coronal?”
“Any prince is a potential Coronal,” Divvis said. “Let us not forget that.”
“And the choosing of the next Coronal must soon occur, no doubt of that,” the Duke of Halanx said. “It’s utterly scandalous that Valentine has kept the old Pontifex alive this long, but sooner or later—”
“This is altogether out of order,” Elidath said sharply.
“I think not,” said Manganot “If we make him a prince, there’s nothing stopping Valentine from putting him eventually on the Confalume Throne itself.”
“These speculations are absurd,” Mirigant said.
“Are they, Mirigant? What absurdities have we not already seen from Valentine? To take a juggler-girl as his wife, and a Vroon wizard as one of his chief ministers, and the rest of his raggle-taggle band of wanderers surrounding him as a court within the court, while we are pushed to the outer rim—”
“Be cautious, Manganot,” Stasilaine said. “There are those in this room that love Lord Valentine.”
“There is no one here who does not,” Manganot retorted. “You may be aware, and Mirigant can surely confirm it, that upon the death of Voriax I was one of the strongest advocates of letting the crown pass to Valentine. I yield to no one in my love of him. But we need not love him uncritically. He is capable of folly, as are we all. And I say it is folly to take a twenty-year-old boy from the back alleys of the Labyrinth and make him a prince of the realm.”
Stasilaine said, “How old were you, Manganot, when you had your princehood? Sixteen? Eighteen? And you, Divvis? Seventeen, I think? Elidath, you?”
“It is different with us,” said Divvis. “We were born to rank. I am the son of a Coronal. Manganot is of the high family of Banglecode. Elidath—”
“The point remains,” Stasilaine said, “that when we were much younger than Hissune we were already at this rank. As was Valentine himself. It is a question of qualification, not of age. And Elidath assures us that he is qualified.”
“Have we ever had a prince created out of commoner stock?” the Duke of Halanx asked. “Think, I beg you: what is this new prince of Valentine’s? A child of the Labyrinth streets, a beggar-boy, or perhaps a pickpocket—”
“You have no true knowledge of that,” said Stasilaine. “You give us mere slander, I think.”
“Is it not the case that he was a beggar in the Labyrinth when Valentine first found him?”
“He was only a child then,” said Elzandir. “And the story is that he hired himself out as a guide, and gave good value for the money, though he was only ten years old. But all of that is beside the point. We need not care about what he was. It is what he is that concerns us, and wh
at he is to be. The Coronal Lord has asked us to make him a prince when, in Elidath’s judgment, the time is right. Elidath tells us that the time is right. Therefore this debate is pointless.”
“No,” Divvis said. “Valentine is not absolute. He requires our consent to this thing.”
“Ah, and would you overrule the will of the Coronal?” asked the Duke of Chorg.
Divvis, after a pause, said, “If my conscience bade me do so, I would, yes. Valentine is not infallible. There are times when I disagree greatly with him. This is one.”
“Ever since the changing of his body,” said Prince Manganot of Banglecode, “I have noted a change also in his personality, an inclination toward the romantic, toward the fantastic, that perhaps was present in him before the usurpation but which never was evident in any significant way, and which now manifests itself in a whole host of—”
“Enough!” said Elidath in exasperation. “We are required to debate this nomination, and we have done so, and I make an end to it now. The Coronal Lord offers us the knight-initiate Hissune son of Elsinome, for elevation to the principate with full privileges of rank. As High Counsellor, and Regent I place the nomination before you with my seconding vote. If there is no opposition, I propose it to be recorded that he is elevated by acclamation.”
“Opposed,” said Divvis.
“Opposed,” said Prince Manganot of Banglecode.
“Opposed,” said the Duke of Halanx.
“Are there any others here,” asked Elidath slowly, “who wish to be placed on record in opposition to the will of the Coronal Lord?”
Prince Nimian of Dundilmir, who had not previously spoken, now declared, “There is an implied threat in those words to which I take exception, Elidath.”
“Your exception is duly noted, although no threat is intended. How do you vote, Nimian?”
“Opposed.”