Lord Prestimion

  This wondrous world, he thought, this place of miracles, that held enough surprises to last one for ten lifetimes—

  But to see the famous golden bees had not been the primary purpose of the Coronal’s visit here, and it was Gialaurys, finally, who brought matters around to the essential topic.

  “There was a report,” he said to the duke, “that the Procurator Dantirya Sambail and one or two of his men had passed this way not long ago. The Coronal has reason to speak with him and wishes to locate him. We wonder if you’ve had any contact with him.”

  The duke showed no sign of surprise. Very likely word had reached him and no doubt many others, by this time, that Lord Prestimion was trying to locate the Procurator of Ni-moya and that a continent-wide manhunt was under way.

  Which was, of course, news of the most sensational kind. But Duke Kaitinimon knew better than to raise whys and wherefores with Prestimion in such an affair. He asked no questions and offered only the most straightforward kind of response, telling the Coronal that he too had heard of the Procurator’s presence in the area, but had not been visited by him. That had puzzled him, that the Procurator would pass this way and not trouble to pay a call. He was certain, though, that Dantirya Sambail was no longer to be found anywhere in Balimoleronda province. More than that he could not say. And when Septach Melayn asked him whether he thought it more likely that the fugitive Procurator would have gone south or west from Bailemoona, Duke Kaitinimon could only shrug. “Plainly he’s trying to get home. What he seeks, I suppose, is the sea. He could reach it either way. Who am I to try to comprehend the mind of Dantirya Sambail?”

  Prestimion decided on the southward route out of Bailemoona. There was never any such thing as a short journey on Majipoor, but the Procurator would have a shorter time of it reaching the sea by going to the south than toward the west; and, though the ports were supposed to be blockaded, Prestimion knew only too well how easy it would be for someone as wily as Dantirya Sambail to bribe his way through any blockade. He had, after all, bought his way out of the Sangamor tunnels. What challenge could it be for him to find some lazy and venal customs official in a southern port who would look the other way while he and Mandralisca put themselves aboard a freighter heading toward Zimroel?

  Southward, then, for Prestimion. Toward Ketheron and its Sulfur Desert.

  It was a logical choice, and an alluring one. The Sulfur Desert was neither a desert nor a place where sulfur was to be found; but from all reports it was one of the most striking sights in the world. Prestimion was grateful to Dantirya Sambail for having given him a pretext to visit it.

  One more place that he would go without Varaile. He could not get her out of his mind.

  Two days’ journey out of Bailemoona they began seeing the first outcroppings of yellow sand. At first there were only stray streaks and tailings of the stuff, mixed with ordinary dark soil that diluted the brilliance of its hue. But gradually the prevalence of it intensified until all the hillsides and valleys seemed stained with it; and then, when the travelers came to the Sulfur River itself, yellowness was all about them as though it were the only color in the universe.

  It was easy to see why the first explorers of this district had believed they had stumbled upon a vast trove of sulfur. Surely there could be no other substance that had that same bright warm hue. But indeed there was; for the “sulfur” of the Sulfur Desert was nothing but powdery yellow sand, a fine calcareous sand given its striking pigmentation by grains of quartz and minute fragments of feldspar and hornblende. It had been formed, apparently, in some incalculably ancient era when much of central Majipoor had been a desert of the most arid kind, and great yellow mountains occupied the territory west of the Labyrinth. The potent action of hard winds over many millennia had scoured those mountains down into powder and carried it thousands of miles, depositing it finally in the region over the Gaibilan Hills behind Ketheron, where the Sulfur River had its source; and the river had done the rest, sweeping enormous quantities of the sand down out of the hills and distributing it across the entire broad valley where the travelers from Castle Mount now stood, a valley that had been known since time immemorial as the Sulfur Desert.

  In most parts of it these unique yellow sands formed a superficial layer that rarely exceeded twenty or thirty feet in thickness. But there were some places where it had a depth of half a mile or more and had solidified under the pressure of the eons into a soft, porous rock that readily formed lofty vertical cliffs. It was in that zone of flat-faced yellow cliffs that the towns and cities of the Ketheron district had been built.

  There were those who thought that Ketheron had a fairyland loveliness about it; but to others, the region was a grotesque and bizarre place, something one might imagine in a nightmare. Erosion had cut a network of sharp-sided gullies deep into the cliffs’ topmost strata, and weathering had created gnarled tapering spires of a hundred fanciful shapes in the exposed areas. By hollowing those spires out and punching tiny slit-windows through the soft rock of their walls, the Ketheron folk had transformed them into dwelling-places, dreamlike and odd, whole towns made up of tall narrow yellow buildings that looked like the pointed caps of witches.

  The strangeness of Ketheron made it a favorite site for soul-painters, who had flocked here for centuries, unfurling their psychosensitive canvases and letting impressions of what they saw filter onto them through their trance-enhanced minds. Hauntingly atmospheric soul-paintings showing Ketheron’s twisted yellow towers were standard items in the houses of the newly rich who had not yet learned to shun the commonplace. Even in the Castle Prestimion had seen five or six Ketherons hanging in odd places about the premises, and they had so thoroughly accustomed him to the look of this place that he was afraid he might take the actuality of it for granted when he finally beheld it.

  But the soul-paintings, he quickly came to see, had not prepared him in any way for Ketheron itself. That yellow landscape, with the muddy yellow river flowing serenely through its heart, and the skewed and contorted ogre-houses of Ketheron city rising spikily from the tops of the cliffs—how mysterious it all looked, how much like a piece of some alien world that had been set down here on Majipoor between Bailemoona and the Aruachosian coast!

  Of course, Prestimion thought, any place you did not know had to be regarded as a place of mystery. And how much knowledge did you ever have, really, even of the places you thought you knew?

  What he saw here, though, was truly strange. Ketheron city, which extended for some miles along the northern bank of the river in the heart of the valley, was the capital of the Ketheron district. It was small as the cities of Majipoor went, half a million people at best. Prestimion stared in wonder at the oddly shaped houses, at the unfamiliar faces of the townspeople who came out to peer at their Coronal as he rode past. Yes, Ketheron was unusual-looking to an extreme. The people themselves had a yellow cast to their features, or so he imagined, and they favored billowing baggy clothing and long floppy caps that gave them a gnomish look perfectly in keeping with the weirdness of their district.

  But even if Ketheron had been as familiar to him in its contours and textures as Muldemar or Halanx or Tidias, Prestimion realized that he would be deceiving himself if he believed that he knew it. Every city was a world in itself, a world in miniature, with thousands of years of history locked up in its walls—more secrets than you could ever learn if you spent the rest of your life there. And Ketheron was just one city of all the multitudinous cities of this vast world that had been given into his care, a place that he would pass through this day, and never see again, and its essence would be as much of a riddle to him tomorrow as it had been the day before yesterday.

  This was farming territory—the soft yellow ground was phenomenally fertile—and the people seemed like simple folk, by and large, unaccustomed not only to visiting Coronals but to aristocrats of any sort. The mayor of Ketheron city appeared almost to be trembling as he came out of the town hall, a spindly, warped three-story tower at
the very edge of the cliff, to greet Prestimion and lead him within. He was protected by a formidable armamentarium of superstition: his purple-and-yellow cloak of office was bedecked with so many talismans and amulets that it was a wonder the poor man could stand upright beneath their weight, and he had brought two mages with him for moral support, a plump little oily-skinned man and a tall gaunt scarecrow of a woman, who carried the holy implements of what was apparently a purely local cult, since not even Maundigand-Klimd had ever seen their like before. The Su-Suheris seemed amused by the earnest clodhopping conjurations by which the pair drove lurking dark spirits from the cavernous, musty-smelling room where the meeting was taking place, rendering it safe for the Coronal and his party. Or was it for the mayor’s own benefit that these rites were being performed?

  Gialaurys conducted the inquiry, while Prestimion and the rest stood to one side. Clearly the mayor was too thoroughly intimidated by the mere proximity of Prestimion to be able to carry on a conversation with him, and Septach Melayn’s airy insouciance did not seem likely to put the poor man any more at ease. But Gialaurys, massive and fearsome though he looked, had the art of speaking with plain folk, for he came of plain stock himself.

  Had the mayor or any of the townsfolk seen or heard aught of Dantirya Sambail in these parts? he asked. No, they had not. The mayor did seem aware, at least, of who Dantirya Sambail was. But he could not imagine why the awesome Procurator of Ni-moya would have been traveling hereabouts. That so mighty and terrifying a personage could have had any reason whatever for entering this picturesque but unimportant region was a concept that left the poor man looking baffled and dismayed.

  “We have chosen the wrong route, I think,” Prestimion murmured to Septach Melayn. “If he’d been heading straight for the Aruachosian coast, he’d have had no choice but to pass through here, wouldn’t he? We should have gone west from Bailemoona instead of south.”

  “Unless the mayor’s somehow been magicked into forgetting that Dantirya Sambail ever came by,” said Septach Melayn. “The Procurator knows how that game’s played, now.”

  But nothing so devious had been necessary. When Gialaurys produced a sketch of Mandralisca that they were carrying with them, the mayor recognized the poison-taster’s bleak face instantly. “Oh, yes, yes,” he said. “He was here. Traveling in a rusty old floater, he was, and stopped in town to buy provisions—three weeks ago, five, six, somewhere back then. Who could ever forget a face like that?”

  “Traveling alone, was he?” Gialaurys asked.

  The mayor had no idea. No one had taken the trouble to investigate the floater, which had been parked by the bank of the river. The hatchet-faced man had bought what he needed and returned to his floater and continued onward. Nor could the mayor say which way he had gone.

  Here, at least, his mages were of some use. “We could see that this stranger would bring no luck to our city,” the gaunt woman volunteered. “And so we followed along his floater’s trail for half a mile or so, and planted dragon-wax candles every hundred yards to ensure that he’d not return.”

  “And the direction he was going—?”

  “South,” the little oily-faced man said immediately. “Toward Arvyanda.”

  10

  “They were glad to get rid of us,” Prestimion said, chuckling. The royal caravan was crossing something called Spurifon Bridge, a weatherbeaten, disturbingly creaky wooden span that could well have been five thousand years old. It was just barely possible to see the silt-choked Sulfur River far below them, moving at the sluggish pace of a sleepy serpent, a tawny yellow line against the brighter yellow of the valley through which it flowed. “How terrifying we must have seemed! I hope they didn’t just make up the first story that came into their minds for the sake of moving us on out of town.”

  “It takes courage to lie to a Coronal,” Abrigant said. “Was there so much as one atom of courage in that whole town?”

  “They told the truth,” said Maundigand-Klimd. “I detect the trail of their incantation-candles along our path. Look: there, and there. Burned to stumps, but there are the stumps. We go the right way.”

  “These Ketherons are harmless timid people caught up in matters too deep for them, and we have badly frightened them,” Prestimion said. “We should do something for them.” He looked toward Septach Melayn. “Make a note of it. We’ll build them a new bridge, at least. This one belongs in a museum.”

  “It’s the responsibility of the Pontifex to build bridges,” grumbled Septach Melayn. “That’s what the title means: builder of bridges. An ancient word, millions of years old.”

  “Nothing’s millions of years old,” said Abrigant. “Not even the stars.”

  “Well, thousands, then.”

  “Peace, both of you,” Prestimion snapped. “Let the appropriate department be notified, a new bridge for Ketheron, and so be it, with no further quibbling.” What was the use of being Coronal, he wondered, if he had to utter a decree twice, even among his closest associates, in order to make it effective?

  South of the river the prevailing yellowness of the countryside soon began to thin out, reversing the pattern of the north, streaks of darker soil becoming more and more common until everything was normal again. It was something of a relief to be leaving it behind. The brilliant color, strange as it was, numbed and deadened the mind after a time by its very intensity, and the monotony of the sulfurous landscape had begun to become oppressive.

  They camped that night in the foothills of a mountain range of moderate size that lay just ahead of them. A sending of the Lady of the Isle came to Prestimion as he slept.

  It was uncommon for Coronals to receive sendings, and not only because the Lady customarily was his own mother. Sendings were meant as guidance for the soul; and one Power of the Realm ordinarily did not presume to advise another. But sometimes when a Coronal stood at a point of decision and crisis the Lady would take it upon herself to intervene with her wisdom. This night, sleep overcame Prestimion almost as soon as he had closed his eyes. He felt himself going down into the trance state that betokened a sending. Then he heard the soft music of the Lady’s domain, and glided easily into a low pavilion of pure white marble set all about with pots of flowering shrubs, fragrant alabandinas and tanigales and the like. And there before him was the Princess Therissa, Lady of the Isle, his mother and mother to all the world, smiling and holding out her hands to him.

  She looked as young as ever, for she was one of those women whom age seemingly could not touch. Her thick dark hair had lost none of its gleam since she had taken up her new duties. The silver headband of her office lay lightly on her brow. On the bosom of her robe, as always, rested the Muldemar Ruby, that wondrous jewel that had been in the family four thousand years, a deep red stone with a purple flush, set in a golden hoop.

  Thismet was standing beside her.

  Or so it seemed at first to Prestimion. That small, delicately formed woman of the mischievous sparkling eyes could only be Thismet; but even as his spirit reverberated with surprise and unease—for why would Thismet be here with the Lady in this sending, when he thought he had begun to make his final peace with the tragedy of her death, and was moving onward in his life?—everything shifted in the smooth way that things often shift in dreams, and he was plainly able to see that the woman next to his mother was not Thismet at all, had never been Thismet, could not have been Thismet. She was Varaile. How strange, he thought, that he had mistaken her for Thismet. For each was beautiful and compelling in her own way, but tall robust full-bodied Varaile looked nothing at all like the tiny fragile-seeming woman whom Prestimion had loved and lost so long ago.

  He became aware that his mother was speaking. But there seemed to be some barrier between her and him that kept him from comprehending her words. It was as if the air was too dense in this pavilion, or the fragrance of the flowers too strong. And still she spoke, smiling throughout, gesturing gently toward him, toward Varaile, toward herself. He strained to hear. And at last he und
erstood. “Do you know this woman, Prestimion?” the Lady was saying. “Her name is Varaile, and she lives in Stee.”

  “I know her, yes, mother. Yes.”

  “She has the bearing of a queen.”

  “A queen is what she will be,” said Prestimion. “My queen, who will live beside me at the Castle.”

  “Do you mean that, Prestimion? Tell me that you do.”

  “Oh, yes, mother. Yes, I do. Yes!”

  When he woke in the morning the dream was still burning in his mind, as true sendings always do. Septach Melayn, who was the first to come upon him, looked at him strangely and laughed, and said, “You appear to be in another world today, my friend.”

  “Perhaps I am,” said Prestimion.

  It was necessary, though, for him to return to this one. They were still many days’ journey from the southern coast, and there was no time to waste if he hoped to overtake Dantirya Sambail.

  The last of the yellow sand now lay behind them. So was the desert aridity of Ketheron. The air was soft and moist here, warm and velvet smooth, the hills thick with greenery that had a waxy sheen, the sky often darkened by rain-clouds, though the showers were always brief. They were moving now toward the tropical regions.

  Three singular landmarks marked the point of transition. The first, in a place where the road veered upward suddenly out of the flat plain and delivered them into a country of craggy hills, was what seemed initially to be a solitary mountain that loomed to their left, but which quickly revealed itself to be an entire mountain range, a long gray wall that rose with surprising abruptness from the terrain surrounding it. Atop the great base rose a host of smaller rounded peaks, each one the exact image of its neighbor, that swarmed along its elongated summit in chaotic and bewildering profusion.

  “It is the Mountain of the Thirteen Doubts,” said Maundigand-Klimd, who had made himself the custodian of their maps during this journey. “Its many peaks look just like each other, and one pass leads only into another, so that a traveler attempting to cross the mountain must invariably get lost.”