“Two more months, my lord.”
“And then?”
“I haven’t decided, sir. Governmental service, possibly. At the Castle, if I can manage it, or else some post with the Pontificate. My father’s a salesman, who goes from city to city, but that has no appeal to me.” And then, as if speaking of himself were of no interest to him:—“The man who killed my cousin? What is going to happen to him, my lord?”
“He’s dead, Dekkeret. You pulled his neck back a little too far, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. I don’t always know my own strength, sir. Is it a bad thing that I killed him, lordship?”
“In fact I would have preferred to have had the opportunity of asking him a question or two about why he felt the way he apparently did about me. But in the heat of the moment you could hardly have been expected to handle him with any special delicacy. And it was good that you moved as quickly as you did.—Are you serious about a career at the Castle, boy?”
Color rose to Dekkeret’s cheeks. “Oh, my lord! Yes, my lord! Yes. Yes. There’s nothing I would want more in life than that!”
“If only everything could be arranged so easily as this can,” Prestimion said, with a genial smile. He glanced toward Akbalik. “When we head back to the Castle, he comes with us. Enroll him as a knight-initiate and see that he’s given accelerated training. Take him under your wing. I put you in charge of him, Akbalik. Set him on his way.”
“I’ll look after him well, my lord.”
“Do that. Who knows? We may have found the next Coronal here today, eh? Stranger things have happened.”
Dekkeret’s face was a fiery red and he was blinking rapidly, as though this astonishing fulfillment of his wildest fantasies had brought him to the edge of tears and he was struggling to fight them back. But then he regained his poise. With great dignity he dropped to his knees before Prestimion and made a solemn starburst, and offered his thanks in a low, unsteady voice.
Prestimion gently told him to stand. “You’ll do well among us, I know.—And I’m deeply sorry about your cousin. I could tell, just in those few moments of speaking with her, what a wonderful girl she must have been. Her death will haunt me for a long time to come.” Those were no empty words. The ghastly purposeless murder of that beautiful child had stirred grim memories in him. Rising, he said to Gialaurys, “Send word to Meglis that the banquet for tonight is canceled, if he hasn’t managed to figure that out himself. Have a light dinner brought to me in my quarters. I don’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, is that clear? In the morning we’ll set out for the Castle.”
The Coronal spent a dark, brooding evening alone. The sight of that flashing sickle, those spurting gouts of blood, would not leave him. The girl’s gentle face, wide-eyed with adoration and fear, kept blurring into a swirling mist before him and transforming itself into Thismet’s very different features. Again and again his tormented mind conjured up for him the grim scene that had come bursting into his mind so many times before, the bloody field of Beldak marsh in the final moments of the battle of Thegomar Edge, the sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon rearing up before Thismet with the dagger in his hand—
He dared not sleep, knowing what dreams were likely to come. A few books were in his baggage. He chose one at random and sat up reading far into the night. The Heights of Castle Mount, it was, that creaky old epic of the long-ago past, rich with tales of valiant Coronals riding forth into remote and perilous corners of the planet. Gladly he lost himself in its pages. Had any of them really existed, those ancient glorious heroes, or were they only names out of fantasy? And would someone, someday, write a poem about him, the tragic and heroic Lord Prestimion, who had loved and lost his enemy’s sister, and then—
A knock at the door. This late?
“Who’s there? What is it?” Prestimion said, not troubling to conceal his annoyance.
“Gialaurys, my lord.”
“I wanted no company tonight.”
“I know that, Prestimion. But there’s an urgent message from Septach Melayn at the Castle. For your eyes alone, immediate response required. I couldn’t let it wait until morning.”
Prestimion sighed. “Very well.” He flung his book aside and went to the door.
The letter bore Prestimion’s own seal. Septach Melayn had sent it in his capacity as regent, then. Urgent indeed: connected, perhaps, to this afternoon’s attempt on his life? Hastily he cracked the blob of red wax and unfolded the letter.
“No,” he said, after scanning it a moment. A drumbeat pounding started at his temples. He closed his eyes. “By all the demons of Triggoin, no!”
“My lord?”
“Here. Read it yourself.”
The message was a brief one. Even Gialaurys, carefully tracing out the words with his fingertip, speaking them silently aloud as he moved along the line, needed only an instant or two to absorb its import.
He looked up. His stolid face was gray with shock.
“Dantirya Sambail has escaped from the Castle? And Mandralisca too? Heading for Zimroel, so it says here, to set up a government in opposition to yours. But this is impossible, my lord! How can it be?—Do you think this is Septach Melayn’s idea of a joke, Prestimion?”
Prestimion managed a somber smile. “Not even his notion of wit could stretch as far as this, Gialaurys.”
“Dantirya Sambail!” Gialaurys cried, prowling restlessly now about the room. “Always Dantirya Sambail!—There’s been some treason here, my lord. If only we’d put him to death without hesitation, right there on the battlefield, this would never have—”
“If only, yes. If only. That is not a useful thought, Gialaurys.” Prestimion took back the letter and stared numbly at it, reading it again and again as though he expected to find its message changing after a time into something less horrific.
But it was ever the same. And he could hear Maundigand-Klimd’s words now echoing in his ears, from that day when they had spoken of what the magus had seen as he pondered the possible consequences of giving Dantirya Sambail back his lost memories: I saw—well—certain ambiguities. A multitude of forking paths.
Yes, Prestimion thought. A multitude of forking paths. And now I must traverse them all.
PART 2
The Book
of Seeking
1
“How can I remain at the Castle after this?” Navigorn demanded. His strong-featured face was a study in the most intense anguish. “I am in disgrace, my lord. I can’t bear to look anyone in the eye. You gave me a task, and see how hideously I have bungled it! What else can I do now but withdraw from this place and go into retirement? I beseech you, my lord, permit me to—”
Prestimion held up his hand. “Peace, Navigorn. I don’t doubt that all this has been upsetting for you, but I still need you here beside me. Your request to retire is refused. Calm down and tell me how the escape came about.”
“If only I could be sure, my lord—”
“Well, what do you think happened, then.”
“Yes. As best I can, lordship.”
Navigorn rose from his seat on the bench to Prestimion’s left and began to pace about like some caged beast that has but little space in which to roam.
The meeting was being held not in Prestimion’s official quarters but in the modest and austere throne-room of Lord Stiamot, a curious survival from ancient times situated just at the edge of the zone of majestic and splendid chambers that was the modern Castle’s core. It was a small, stark room, furnished with a simple marble seat in antique style for the Coronal, low benches for his ministers, and a Makroposopos carpet in subdued colors that supposedly was a reproduction of the one from Lord Stiamot’s time.
But Lord Stiamot’s time was seven thousand years in the past. The throne-chamber he had used had long since been supplanted by a grand throne-room built by Lord Makhario, and that in turn had given way after many centuries to the even more magnificent royal chamber of Lord Confalume, which Prestimion’s predecessor had furnished with a throne of such supreme grandeur
that it might seem better befitted for a god than a mere worldly king. Prestimion, though, since his return to the Castle from his travels on the Mount, had taken to using the unostentatious little Stiamot throne-room as his working headquarters, preferring its simplicity to the splendor of his formal office or the impossibly opulent surroundings of Lord Confalume’s throne-chamber. He had been amused to learn that Korsibar had shown the same preference after the first few weeks of his short reign.
Only the innermost members of Prestimion’s circle were at the meeting: Septach Melayn, Gialaurys, Maundigand-Klimd, and Prestimion’s brothers Abrigant and Teotas. Prestimion was aware that it might have been appropriate to invite Vologaz Sar, whom the Pontifex Confalume had lately designated to be the official representative of the Pontificate at the Castle, and also the hierarch Marcatain, as representative for that arm of the government which was headed by the Lady of the Isle. But he was not yet certain how to go about admitting the great deception that he had practiced on the world to his mother the Lady, or to the Pontifex. Especially to the Pontifex. And so, thus far, he had been governing as though he were the sole Power of the Realm, sharing nothing with the two high officials who were in fact senior to him by constitutional rank.
That could not continue much longer. Already, this new crisis over Dantirya Sambail had compelled him to reveal to his astonished brothers the fact of the memory-obliteration. He could trust them to remain silent as long as that was his wish. But he knew that he had no authority to compel silence from his mother, or from Confalume.
Navigorn, without ceasing his pacing, said, “There was bribery involved. Of that I’m certain. Mandralisca, it was—”
“That demon!” Gialaurys exclaimed.
“That demon, yes. The Procurator’s poison-taster, and poisonous is he himself. We had him locked safely away, so we thought, but somehow he began to suborn his guards, promising them—it isn’t clear—vast estates in Zimroel, or something of the kind. Four of them have disappeared, at any rate. Set him free, they did, and slipped away to points unknown.”
“You have their names?” Septach Melayn asked.
“Of course.”
“They’ll be found, no matter where they’ve fled. Duly punished to the limits of the law.” Septach Melayn made quick whicking gestures with his wrist as though flourishing an invisible sword in the air. “Has there ever been such a fountain of iniquity in our world as this vile Mandralisca, I wonder? The very first time I set eyes on him I knew—”
“Yes, I remember,” Prestimion said, with a bleak smile. “It was at the funeral games for the old Pontifex, when you and I had the wager on the baton-dueling, and you bet against Mandralisca just out of sheer loathing for him, though he was the better baton-man. And lost five crowns to me.” The Coronal looked toward Navigorn again. “All right. We return to your story. Mandralisca has succeeded in getting free. How does he manage to make his way to Dantirya Sambail in a different part of the tunnels entirely?”
“Unclear, lordship. More bribery, no doubt.”
“How badly do you pay your men, Navigorn, that they so readily sell their honor to prisoners?” asked Teotas fiercely.
Navigorn whirled on Prestimion’s younger brother as though he had been slapped. Hot fury crackled in his eyes. But Teotas, a slender golden-haired youth who bore a startling resemblance to his royal brother but had a far more fiery temper, met Navigorn’s glare with anger of his own. For a moment it seemed as though they might fight. Then, just as Prestimion was on the verge of signaling Gialaurys to intervene, Navigorn turned away with a look of weariness and defeat on his face and said in a low voice, “Your question does not deserve an answer, boy. But I tell you all the same, I could have given them a hundred royals a week, and it would have made no difference. He took possession of their souls.”
“This is so,” said Septach Melayn, lightly touching his fingertips to Teotas’s chest before the young prince could reply. “Mandralisca deals in demons’ coinage. On the right day he could suborn anyone he chooses. Anyone.”
“Me? You? Prestimion?” snapped Teotas, angrily pushing the hand aside. “Demon or no, he can’t buy everyone. You speak only for yourself here, Septach Melayn!”
“Enough of this,” Prestimion said impatiently. “We’re losing our way.—What do you say, Navigorn? How could Mandralisca have been able to get to his master’s cell?”
“I can’t tell you that. One of the four bribed ones must have helped him, I suppose. I can say to you only that he did get to him, got him loose, led him from the tunnels without anyone trying to stop them. Quite likely he cast some spell that allowed him to cloud the minds of those on duty at the gates, and walked by them as though they were asleep.”
“I never knew this Mandralisca to be versed in sorcery!” said Prestimion, startled.
“Anyone can master a simple spell or two,” Maundigand-Klimd said. “And that one would be simple.”
“For you, perhaps. But he’d have used it the day he first was imprisoned, if he’d known the art of it from the beginning,” Prestimion said. “It must have been brought to him covertly just the other day.”
“By whom?” Gialaurys asked.
“By some other member of the Procurator’s retinue, smuggling it into the tunnels,” cried Septach Melayn. “Getting it in, perhaps, the same way Mandralisca got himself and his master out. A conspiracy! The Ni-moya folk found out where Dantirya Sambail was, and contrived by magical arts to get him free!”
“This is shameful,” Teotas said, glowering again at Navigorn. “If prisoners can be freed so casually from the tunnels by wizardry, why was no sort of counterspell put on the place to protect against that very thing?”
“Spells—counterspells—there would be no end of that,” Prestimion said irritably. “We couldn’t have guarded against every eventuality, Teotas.” He looked toward the Su-Suheris. “I asked you to strip the Procurator’s mind of certain special memories, Maundigand-Klimd. And I instructed you, also, to remove from it every possibility of acting on evil impulses. Were those things done?”
“Only the initial and very preliminary phase, the removal of those certain memories. The greater work, the suppression of the evil that’s so deeply rooted in his character, must be executed with care, my lord, if the man’s not to be reduced to a babbling idiot.”
“Small loss that would have been,” said Gialaurys.—“Well, then: a pretty mess, Dantirya Sambail loose with most or all of his foulness still intact within him, and on his way to Zimroel to raise an army. But we’ll handle it. We’ll get messengers out, top speed, west and south. I’ll slap a surveillance order on all ports along both those coasts. Stoien, Treymone, Alaisor—we’ll cut him off from home, and track him down, and bring him back here in chains. It’s not as though the Procurator’s a difficult man to recognize.”
“That he is not,” said Abrigant, speaking for the first time. “But he may not have gone west or south, though.”
“What?” said Gialaurys and Septach Melayn in the same instant.
Abrigant unfolded a despatch. “Akbalik brought this to me five minutes before I entered this meeting,” he said. “According to what I see here, someone looking very much like the Procurator of Ni-moya was sighted these two days past in Vrambikat province. I point out that Vrambikat lies due east of Castle Mount.”
“East,” said Gialaurys in a baffled tone. “What good’s his going east? This must be wrong. You can’t get to Zimroel from here by traveling east!”
“You can if you get yourself to the shore of the Great Sea and sail clear across to the other side,” said Septach Melayn with a sly smile.
Gialaurys grunted in annoyance. “Nobody in all of history has ever sailed across the Great Sea. What makes you think Dantirya Sambail would attempt such an impossible project now?”
“Let’s hope he has,” said Abrigant, grinning. “He’ll never be seen again!”
A bright cascade of laughter came from Septach Melayn. “Or if by some miracle h
e does get all the way over to Zimroel after a year or two at sea,” he said, “it’ll take him half a year more just to make the trip from Pidruid or Narabal, or wherever he comes ashore, to his home in Ni-moya. Where we’ll have troops waiting to arrest him.”
Prestimion alone failed to register amusement. “The thought of the Procurator’s making such a voyage at all is completely imbecilic,” he said. “It can’t be done.”
“There is an old tale,” said Maundigand-Klimd, “that the thing was attempted in the time of Lord Arioc, a vessel setting out from the port of Til-omon and sailing westward in the Great Sea, but it became tangled in floating dragon-grass, and then miscarried its direction altogether, and wandered at sea for five years, or, some say, eleven, before finally finding its way back to the port from which it had—”
“All well and good,” said Prestimion sharply, “but I refuse to believe that Dantirya Sambail has any such enterprise in mind. If he really has set out eastward, it’s no doubt some sort of trick. Eastern Alhanroel’s a remote, isolated place. He can disappear into it and easily avoid capture, and eventually he could change course entirely and head up north to Bandar Delem or Vythiskiorn and find a Zimroel-bound ship there. Or swing around abruptly to the south, and go out by way of the tropics. The one idea I don’t give any credit to at all is that he’s actually planning to make his way home by way of a sea that nobody has ever been able to navigate.”
“What are you going to do, then?” asked Septach Melayn.
“Send a military force toward Vrambikat and try to track him down before he vanishes altogether.” Prestimion pointed toward Gialaurys. “Under your command, Gialaurys,” he said. “Yours and Abrigant’s, jointly. I want you on the road to Vrambikat within fifty hours.” He hesitated a moment and added, gesturing to the Su-Suheris, “You’ll go with them, Maundigand-Klimd. And I want a Vroon, also. Vroons are wondrous good at magicking up the right direction for travel. Have you a Vroon among your wizardly acquaintances, Maundigand-Klimd, who could accompany you?”