No, not a grand processional, only a state visit to some neighboring cities. But it was certainly a processional, and very grand in its own way. Out through the Dizimaule Gate and down the Grand Calintane Highway the Coronal went, aboard the first of a long succession of ornate royal floaters, and with him went his brothers Abrigant and Teotas and half the high officials of his young administration, the Grand Admiral Gialaurys and the Counsellors Navigorn of Hoikmar and Belditan the younger of Gimkandale and Yegan of Low Morpin, and Septach Melayn’s kinsman Dembitave, Duke of Tidias, and many more. Septach Melayn himself had remained behind as regent at the Castle: it seemed best not to leave the place entirely bereft of its major figures, even for the few weeks of this tour.
Prestimion meant to stop in one city of each of the five rings of the Mount. The various host city mayors had, of course, been notified weeks before, and were ready to meet the high and crushingly costly responsibility of providing lodgings and proper festivities for a Coronal and his entourage.
Muldemar was the chosen stop among the High Cities: Prestimion’s own native place, where he could sleep once more at his family’s great estate of Muldemar House, and hunt sigimoins and bilantoons in his own game preserve, and embrace the loyal retainers who had served his parents and his grandparents before them, and accept the homage of the good people of Muldemar City, to whom he was not only their Coronal but their prince and their friend. Here he quietly asked the stewards and chamberlains whether there had been any problems among the workers of late; and was told, yes, yes, a few strange things had occurred, people complaining of a kind of forgetfulness of trivial and non-trivial things, and even some serious instances of deep confusion and inner distress verging on—well, on madness. But it was only a passing thing, Prestimion was told, and no reason for great concern.
Then it was on to Peritole of the Inner Cities, where seven million people lived in splendid isolation amid some of the most spectacular scenery of the upper Mount: subordinate mountain ranges of wild beauty, and strange purple conical peaks rising to great heights out of gray-green graveled plains, and above all the magnificent natural stone staircase of Peritole Pass, that gave access from above to the long sloping sprawl of the tremendous mountain’s midsection. In Peritole, too, Prestimion heard tales of breakdown and mental confusion, though those who told these stories to him brushed them quickly aside as insignificant, and urged the Coronal to sample another tray of the pungent smoked meats that were the specialty of the city.
Downward. Strave of the Guardian Cities, a place of the grandest architectural exuberance, no two structures remotely alike, great palaces chock-a-block defying one another in their glorious excess, profusions of towers and pavilions and belvederes and steeples and belfries and cupolas and rotundas and porticos sprouting madly everywhere like giant mushrooms. The city had only recently emerged from a period of official mourning, for Earl Alexid of Strave had died not long before—of a sudden seizure, it was said. The new earl, Alexid’s son Verligar, was hardly more than a boy, and plainly overawed by the presence of the Coronal at his side. But he pledged his loyalty most graciously. That was a taxing moment for Prestimion, who was privately aware that his one-time friend and hunting companion Earl Alexid had died not of any inward failing of his flesh but in fact under the sword of Septach Melayn, in the battle of Arkilon plain, during the early days of the Korsibar insurrection.
There had been some outbreaks of mental disturbances in Strave as well, it seemed, though neither Earl Verligar nor anyone else was greatly eager to speak of them. The subject seemed an embarrassment to them, as it had been in Muldemar.
When the feasting was done in Strave the Coronal and his companions moved on to their next destination. That was white-walled Minimool, of the Guardian Cities; and from there, after a few days, a journey of seventy miles down the long sloping flank of the lower Mount brought Prestimion to Gimkandale of the Free Cities, and then another hundred miles of zigzagging highways at the mountain’s wide-spreading base took him to the final city of his tour, ancient Normork, second oldest of the Slope Cities.
“This is a dark heavy place,” Gialaurys murmured to Prestimion, as their floater passed through the curiously inconspicuous gate that was the single opening in Normork’s gigantic wall of black stone. “I feel its weight on me already, and we’re scarcely inside the town!”
Prestimion, who was leaning from his floater’s window, waving and smiling to the crowd that lined the road, felt it also. Normork clung to the dark fangs of the range known as Normork Crest the way some hunted animal clings to a precarious perch that it knows to be beyond its enemies’ reach. The great black wall that protected the city—against whom? Prestimion wondered—was entirely out of proportion to the towers of gray stone behind it, a fantastically overbearing fortification impossible to justify by any rational means. And that lone tiny gate—what a strange statement that made! Was this not Majipoor, where all peoples lived in peace and harmony? Why hide yourselves like frightened mice in such a miserable inward-turning fashion as this?
But he was Coronal of all Majipoor, the strange cities as well as the beautiful ones, and it was not for him to disapprove of the way any place cared to display itself to the world. And so he favored the Normork folk with dazzling smiles and enthusiastic salutes, and made starbursts to them as they made them to him, and let them see by every aspect of his demeanor how pleased he was to be entering their splendid city. And to Gialaurys he said, hissing under his breath, “Smile! Look happy! This place is much beloved by those who dwell here, and we are not here as its judges, Gialaurys.”
“Beloved, is it? I’d sooner embrace a sea-dragon!”
“Pretend you are in Piliplok,” said Prestimion. A sly remark, that was; for Gialaurys’s own native city, somber Piliplok where no street deviated so much as an inch from the rigid plan that had been laid out thousands of years before, was itself widely considered a grim and depressing place by those who did not happen to have been born there. But Prestimion’s light-hearted gibe slipped easily past the Grand Admiral, as such gibes often did, and in his diligent way Gialaurys summoned up the closest thing he could manage to a sunny smile and thrust his head out the window on his side of the floater to show the Normork folk what delight he felt at beholding their pretty town.
It was a bright golden day, at least, and the gray stone blocks out of which the buildings of Normork were constructed took on a pleasantly radiant shimmer. Once one is inside the wall, Prestimion thought, the city has a certain kind of ponderous charm.
There was nothing charming, though, about the fortress-like palace of the Counts of Normork. It was a solid mass of stone, crouching in a curving bay of the wall like a great predatory beast about to spring upon the city it dominated. The plaza in front of it was packed with people, thousands of them, with untold thousands more jammed into the narrow streets beyond. “Prestimion!” they were shouting. “Prestimion! Lord Prestimion!” Or so he supposed the words to be; but the outcry blurred into chaotic incoherence as it rebounded from the rough stone walls all around, and became merely a dull booming rhythmic sound.
Count Meglis—a new man; Prestimion did not know him well; he was some distant relative of Iram, the former count who had been slain in the civil war—came out to greet him. This Meglis was a swarthy man, wide and blocky and built low to the ground like the palace of which he was now the possessor, with unpleasant little bloodshot eyes and a great startling space between his front teeth both above and below. There was something about his square-sided frame and solidly anchored stance that reminded Prestimion uncomfortably of Dantirya Sambail. It would have been much more pleasing to be received here today by the good-hearted red-haired Count Iram, that superb chariot-racer and more than able archer.
But Iram had fallen fighting in the service of Korsibar, and so had his lithe young brother Lamiran; and the welcome that this Count Meglis offered seemed genuine and warm enough. He stood firmly planted on the lowest steps of his palace, arms ou
tspread, grinning a great snaggle-toothed grin that conveyed complete and absolute delight at the idea that the Coronal of Majipoor was to be his guest at dinner tonight.
Prestimion stepped from his floater. Gialaurys was just to his left; capable gray-eyed Akbalik, Prince Serithorn’s nephew, was the officer of the guard at his right. To Prestimion’s surprise, Count Meglis did not stir from his spot. Protocol called for the Count to come forward to the Coronal, not for the Coronal to go to the Count; but Meglis, still grinning, still holding his arms out wide, stood where he was, twenty or thirty paces away, as though he expected Prestimion to ascend the palace steps to him in order to receive his embrace.
Well, why not stand there, fool that he obviously was? What would this man, catapulted upward with so little preparation into his title by the premature deaths both of Iram and his brother, know of court protocol? But someone should have coached him. Prestimion, though rarely a stickler for proper procedure, nevertheless could hardly make the first move himself, and Meglis did not seem to understand what was required of him.
So each maintained his position, and the moment of stasis stretched on and on. Then, just as it began to seem to Prestimion that the deadlock would never end, something unexpected happened. A high female voice from the crowd called out, “Lordship! Lordship!” Prestimion saw a pretty young woman—no, a girl; she was fifteen, sixteen at most—detach herself from the front row of the crowd and set out in his direction, carrying an elaborate floral bouquet, crimson-and-gold halatingas and bright yellow morigoins and deep-green treymonions and many more blooms that he could not have named, all woven together in the most beautiful way.
Prestimion’s guards moved immediately to cut off her approach. But her boldness amused him. He shook his head and beckoned for her to advance. Since the squat, ugly Count Meglis was still stupidly waiting up there with grinning face and widespread arms, and seemed to intend to wait like that there forever, it would be a pleasant and diverting interruption of the present awkwardness, Prestimion thought, to accept these splendid flowers from this lovely girl.
She was very attractive: tall and slender—a bit taller than he was himself, he saw—with a great mass of reddish-gold curls cascading about her face and shining gray-violet eyes. Her expression was a charming mixture of fear and awe and eagerness and—yes—love. That was the only word for it. He had never seen such unqualified adoration in a person’s eyes, never.
She was trembling as she extended the bouquet.
“How marvelous they are,” Prestimion said, taking them from her. “I’ll keep them beside my bed tonight.” She flushed a bright scarlet and made a fluttering starburst at him and began to back away, but Prestimion, captivated by the shy and innocent loveliness of her, was not ready to have her go. He took a step or two in her direction.—“What’s your name, girl?”
“Sithelle, your lordship.” Her voice was husky with terror. She could barely get the sounds out.
“Sithelle. A lovely name. You live here in Normork, do you? Are you still at school?”
She began to make some sort of reply. But Prestimion was unable to hear whatever she might have said, because in that moment chaos descended on the scene. Out of the multitudes packed close in the plaza a second person abruptly emerged, a thin wild-eyed bearded man who came prancing forward, screaming wildly, bellowing clotted unintelligible words, the gibberish of a lunatic. He was brandishing in his upraised right hand a farmer’s sickle, honed to glittering sharpness. The girl was all that separated Prestimion from him. As the madman came bearing down upon them she turned automatically in the direction of the disturbance and virtually collided with him as she stepped forward.
“Look out!” Prestimion cried.
She had no chance. Unhesitatingly, almost without giving it a thought, the man slashed at her with the sickle, a quick impatient chopping swipe as though he wanted merely to clear her from his path. The girl fell away to one side and slumped to the pavement, kicking convulsively and clutching desperately at her throat. With the peculiar intense clarity that comes over one at such moments Prestimion saw unceasing streams of blood flowing between her clamped fingers.
An instant later the madman rose up before him, the bloody sickle lifted high. Gialaurys and Akbalik, aware by now of what was taking place, rushed toward him. But someone else reached Prestimion first. A burly young man of impressive size had burst out of the crowd only seconds behind the man with the sickle, and now, acting with startling speed, he caught up with the assassin, seized his right arm by the wrist, and bent it sharply backward. The sickle dropped from his hand, hit the ground with a tinny clatter, and skittered harmlessly away. The young man, crooking his other arm, wrapped it around the madman’s throat and closed it on him with remorseless twisting force.
There was a sharp snapping sound. The madman went limp, his head lolling loosely. The big young man hurled him contemptuously away from him like a discarded doll.
He knelt then beside the wounded girl, whose entire upper body was covered in bright blood. She was no longer moving. A great moan came from the boy as he inspected her frightful wound. For a moment he seemed overwhelmed by shock and grief. Then, tenderly scooping her into his arms, he rose and walked off into the crowd with his burden.
The whole extraordinary event had taken no more than a few seconds. Prestimion felt dazed by it all. He struggled to regain his poise.
Akbalik was standing grim-faced above the fallen and motionless assassin, now, pinning him to the ground with the tip of his sword as if expecting him to rise and begin swinging the sickle again. The other guardsmen arrayed themselves in a close formation in front of the astounded townspeople, cutting the Coronal off from their view. Gialaurys loomed up like a wall in front of Prestimion.
“Lordship?” he cried, wide-eyed with alarm. “Are you safe?”
Prestimion nodded. He was badly shaken, but the sickle had come nowhere near him. Quickly he turned and trotted up the palace steps toward Meglis, who was still standing there, gaping like a drowned habbagog. The royal party hurried inside. Someone brought a bowl of chilled wine, and Prestimion gulped it greedily. The vision of that bloodied girl—struck down before his eyes, dying, perhaps already dead—blazed in his mind. And the lunatic assassin: his wild howls, those crazed eyes, that flashing blade! But for the accident that the girl had happened to be standing right in front of him, Prestimion knew, he would probably be lying dead in the plaza this very moment. Her presence there had saved him, yes, and that of the sturdy young man who had grabbed the assailant’s arm.
How strange, he thought, to be the target of an assassination attempt! Had a Coronal ever died in such a way? Cut down in front of the cheering populace by a man swinging a blade? He doubted it. It went against all reason. The Coronal was the embodiment of the world; to kill him was to shatter a continent, to send all of Alhanroel, say, to the bottom of the sea. Korsibar’s seizing of the throne was something he could almost understand: it was one prince asserting a claim, however invalid it might be, against the rights of another. Not this: this was new. This was madness: an emptiness in someone’s soul driving him to create an emptiness in the world. Prestimion gave thanks to the Divine that it had failed. Not merely for his own sake; that was too obvious to be worth thinking about. But for the world’s. The world could not afford to have the Coronal struck down in the street like some beast in a slaughterhouse.
Prestimion turned to Akbalik. “Find that boy, and bring him here right away. I want to know how the girl is, too.” And, to Gialaurys: “What’s become of the assassin?”
“Dead, lordship.”
“Damnation! I didn’t want him killed, Gialaurys. He should have been held for questioning.”
Akbalik, who had reached the palace door, paused and turned. “Nothing could be done, my lord. His neck had been broken. I was standing over a corpse.”
“Let’s get some information about who he was, at any rate. Just a solitary lunatic? Or do we have a conspiracy here, I wonder?”
Meglis now came bumbling up, muttering imbecilic apologies, inarticulately craving the Coronal’s pardon for this unfortunate incident. He was an altogether contemptible person, Prestimion decided. Another hard consequence of Korsibar’s terrible folly: the flower of Majipoor’s aristocracy had perished in the war, and all too many of the great titles were in the hands of fools or boys.
In late afternoon Akbalik returned to the palace. The young man who had saved Prestimion’s life was with him.
“This is Dekkeret,” Akbalik said. “The girl was his cousin.”
“Was?”
“She died within moments, my lord,” said the boy. His voice quavered just a little. He was very pale, and could barely meet Prestimion’s gaze. The overpowering grief he felt was obvious; but he appeared to have it under tight control. “It is the most terrible loss. She was my best friend. And talked for weeks of nothing else but your visit, and how badly she wanted to have a glimpse of you at close range when you were here. And for you to have a glimpse of her, my lord. I think she was in love with you.”
“I think so too,” Prestimion said. He gave the boy a long, careful look. He seemed very impressive. Prestimion had learned long ago that there are some people whose qualities are instantly apparent, and that was the way with this Dekkeret: no doubt but that he was intelligent, sensitive, strong within and without. And, perhaps, ambitious. The boy was behaving very well, too, under the impact of his lovely cousin’s awful death.
An idea began suddenly to form in him. “How old are you, Dekkeret?”
“Eighteen last Fourday, sir.”
“Are you in school?”