“I long for retirement,” the Grand Admiral said. “I am no longer young. I will return to Bombifale and enjoy the comforts and pleasures of my estate, I think.”
Serithorn smiled lightly. “Ah? You mean Prestimion hasn’t reappointed you as Admiral, is that it? Well, we’ll miss you, Gonivaul. But of course it’s a lot of ghastly drudgery, being Grand Admiral. I can hardly blame you for being willing to lay the job down.—Tell me, Gonivaul, did you ever set foot on board a seagoing vessel so much as once, during your entire term of office? No, surely not. A risky thing it is, going to sea. Man can drown, doing that.”
It was an old business, the duels of sarcastic byplay between these two great lords.
The part of Gonivaul’s face that was visible turned bright red with wrath.
“Serithorn—” he began ominously.
“If I may, gentlemen,” said Navigorn, cutting smoothly across the banter just as matters were threatening to become unruly.
Gonivaul backed off, grumbling. Serithorn chuckled in satisfaction.
Navigorn said, “I’ve not yet officially come into my new post, and already I’ve been handed a most peculiar problem to deal with. Perhaps you two, who know all the ins and outs of Castle politics as few others do, can advise me.”
“And what problem may that be?” said Serithorn, making no great show of interest. He was looking not at Navigorn but at the field below.
The second of the day’s two non-human contestants was at the baseline now, a great shaggy Skandar wearing a soft woolen jerkin boldly striped in black and orange and yellow. His bow, broader and more powerful even than Prestimion’s, dangled casually from one of his four huge hands like a plaything. The herald’s announcement gave his name as Hent Mekkiturn.
“Do you recognize the colors this archer wears, by any chance?” asked Navigorn.
“They are those of the Procurator Dantirya Sambail, I believe,” said Serithorn, after a moment’s inner deliberation.
“Exactly. And where is the Procurator himself, do you think?”
“Why—why—” Serithorn looked around. “You know, I don’t actually see him. He should be sitting right up here near us, I’d say. Do you have any idea of where he is, Gonivaul?”
“I haven’t laid eyes on him all week,” said the Grand Admiral. “Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I did see him. He’s not what you’d call an inconspicuous man, either. Could it be that he’s skipped the coronation altogether and stayed home, back there in Ni-moya?”
“Impossible,” Serithorn said. “A new Coronal is being crowned for the first time in decades, and the most powerful prince in Zimroel doesn’t bother to show up? That would be absurd. For one thing, Dantirya Sambail would want to be on the scene when the new appointments and preferences are handed out. And so he was, I’m quite certain, during the months when old Prankipin was dying. He’d have stayed for the coronation, certainly. Besides, Prestimion would surely take mortal offense if the Procurator were to snub him like this.”
“Oh, Dantirya Sambail’s at the Castle, all right,” said Navigorn. “That’s precisely the problem I want to discuss. You haven’t noticed him at any of the festivities because he happens to be a prisoner in the Sangamor tunnels. And now Prestimion’s set me in charge of him. I’m to be his jailer, it seems. My first official duty as a member of the Council.”
A look of incredulity appeared on Serithorn’s face. “What are you saying, Navigorn? Dantirya Sambail, a prisoner?”
“Apparently so.”
Gonivaul seemed equally amazed. “I find this altogether unbelievable. Why would Prestimion put Dantirya Sambail in the tunnels? The Procurator’s his own cousin—well, some sort of relative, anyway, right? You’d know more about that than I do, Serithorn. What is this, a family quarrel?”
“Perhaps it is. More to the point,” Serithorn said, “how could anybody, even Prestimion, succeed in locking up someone as blustering and obstreperous and generally vile as Dantirya Sambail? I’d think it would be harder than locking up a whole pack of maddened haiguses. And if it’s actually been done, why haven’t we heard about it? I’d think it would be the talk of the Castle.”
Navigorn turned his hands outward in a shrug. “I have no answers for any of this, gentlemen. I don’t understand the least thing about it. All I know is that the Procurator’s in the lockup, or so Prestimion assures me, and the Coronal has assigned me the job of making sure he stays there until he can be brought to judgment.”
“Judgment for what?” Gonivaul cried.
“I don’t have the slightest idea. I asked him what crime the Procurator was accused of, and he said he’d discuss that with me some other time.”
“Well, what’s your difficulty, then?” asked Serithorn crisply. “The Coronal has given you an assignment. You do as he says, that’s all. He wants you to be the Procurator’s jailer? Then be his jailer, Navigorn.”
“I hold no great love in my heart for Dantirya Sambail. He’s little more than a wild beast, the Procurator. But even so—if he’s being held without justification, purely at Prestimion’s whim, am I not an accomplice to injustice if I help to keep him in prison?”
Gonivaul said, amazed, “Are you raising an issue of conscience, Navigorn?”
“You might call it that.”
“You’ve taken an oath to serve the Coronal. The Coronal sees fit to place Dantirya Sambail under arrest, and asks you to enforce it. Do as he says, or else resign your office. Those are your choices, Navigorn. Do you believe Prestimion’s an evil man?”
“Of course not. And I have no desire to resign.”
“Well, then, assume that Prestimion believes there’s just cause for locking the Procurator away. Put twenty picked men on duty in the tunnels round the clock, or thirty, or however many you think are necessary, and have them keep watch, and make sure they understand that if Dantirya Sambail manages to charm his way out of his cell, or to bully and bluster his way out, or to get out in any other way at all, they’ll spend the rest of their lives regretting it.”
“And if men of Ni-moya, the Procurator’s men, that unsavory crew of murderers and thieves that Dantirya Sambail likes to keep about him, should come to me this afternoon,” said Navigorn, “and demand to know where their master is and on what charges he’s being held, and threaten to start an uproar from one end of the Castle to the other unless he’s released immediately—?”
“Refer them to the Coronal,” Gonivaul said. “He’s the one who put Dantirya Sambail in jail, not you. If they want explanations, they can get them from Lord Prestimion.”
“Dantirya Sambail a prisoner,” said Serithorn in a wondering tone, as though speaking to the air around him. “What a strange business! What an odd way to begin the new reign!—Are we supposed to keep this news a secret, Navigorn?”
“The Coronal told me nothing about that. The less said the better, I’d imagine.”
“Yes. Yes. The less said the better.”
“Indeed,” said Gonivaul. “Best to say no more.” And they all nodded vigorously.
“Serithorn! Gonivaul!” a hearty, raucous voice cried just then, from a couple of rows above. “Hello, Navigorn.” It was Fisiolo, the Count of Stee. With him was a short, stocky, ruddy-faced man with dark, chilly eyes and a high forehead. A formidable mass of stiff silvery hair swept upward from that forehead to a prodigious and somewhat alarming height. “You know Simbilon Khayf, do you?” Fisiolo asked, with a glance toward his companion. “Richest man in Stee. Prestimion himself will be coming to him for loans before long, mark my words.”
Simbilon Khayf favored Serithorn and Gonivaul and Navigorn with a quick, bland, beaming inclination of his head, studiedly modest. He seemed very much flattered to find himself in the presence of peers of such lofty position. Count Fisiolo, a square-faced, blunt-featured man who was never one to stand on ceremony, immediately beckoned Simbilon Khayf to follow him down into the box that the other three occupied, and he lost no time in doing so. But he ga
ve the distinct impression of being someone who knew that he was far out of his depth.
“Have you heard?” Fisiolo said. “Prestimion’s got Dantirya Sambail penned up in the tunnels! Has him hanging on the wall in heavy irons, so I’m told. Can you imagine such a thing? It’s the talk of the Castle.”
“We’ve only just learned of it,” said Serithorn. “Well, if the story’s true, no doubt the Coronal had good reason for putting him there.”
“And what could that have been? Did nasty Dantirya Sambail say something dreadfully rude? Dantirya Sambail make the starburst sign the wrong way, maybe? Dantirya Sambail break wind at the coronation ceremony?—Come to think of it, was Dantirya Sambail even at the coronation ceremony?”
“I don’t remember seeing him arrive at the Castle at all,” Gonivaul said. “When we all came back here after Prankipin’s funeral.”
“Nor I,” said Navigorn. “And I was here when the main caravan from the Labyrinth arrived. Dantirya Sambail wasn’t with it.”
“Yet we are reliably informed that he is here,” said Serithorn. “Has been for some time, it seems. Long enough to offend Prestimion and be imprisoned, and yet nobody remembers seeing him arrive. This is very strange. Dantirya Sambail creates whirlwinds of noise about himself wherever he goes. How could he have come to the Castle, and none of us know it?”
“Strange, yes,” said Gonivaul.
“Strange indeed,” added Count Fisiolo. “But I confess that I like the idea that Prestimion has managed somehow to put that repulsive loathsome monster in irons. Don’t you?”
5
The Procurator of Ni-moya was much on Prestimion’s mind, too, in the days that followed the coronation festival. But he was in no hurry to deal with his treacherous kinsman, who had betrayed him again and again in the twistings and turnings of the late civil war. Let him languish some while longer in the dungeon into which he had been cast, Prestimion thought. It was necessary first to figure out some way of handling his case.
Beyond any question Dantirya Sambail was guilty of high treason. More than anyone, except, perhaps, the Lady Thismet herself, he had spurred Korsibar on to his insane rebellion. The breaking of the dam on the Iyann had been his doing, too, a savage act that had caused unthinkable destruction. And in the battle of Thegomar Edge he had lifted his hand against Prestimion in single combat, jeeringly offering to let the contest decide which of them would be the next Coronal and attacking Prestimion with axe and saber. Prestimion had prevailed in that encounter, though it was a close thing. But he had been unable to slay his defeated kinsman then and there on the battlefield, which was what he deserved. Instead Prestimion had had Dantirya Sambail and his malevolent henchman Mandralisca hauled away as prisoners, to be brought to judgment at a later time.
But how, Prestimion wondered, could the Procurator be put on trial for crimes that nobody, not even the accused man himself, was able to remember? Who would stand forth as his accuser? What evidence could be adduced against him? “This man was the chief fomenter of the civil war,” yes. But what civil war? “It was his treasonous intention to seize the royal throne for himself once he had arranged the death of his puppet Korsibar.” Korsibar? Who was Korsibar? “He is guilty of menacing the life of the legitimate Coronal on the field of battle with deadly weapons.” What battle, where, when?
Prestimion had no answers to these questions. And there were, anyway, more pressing problems to deal with first, here in the early weeks of his reign.
The coronation guests, most of them, had scattered far and wide to their homes. The princes and dukes and earls and mayors had gone back to their own domains; the former Coronal who now was Confalume Pontifex had taken himself down the River Glayge on the long somber voyage that would deliver him to his new subterranean home in the Labyrinth; the archers and jousters and wrestlers and swordsmen who had come to show their skills at the coronation games were dispersed as well. The Princess Therissa had gone back to Muldemar House to prepare for her journey to the Isle of Sleep and the tasks that awaited her there. The Castle was suddenly a much quieter place as Prestimion entered into the tasks of the new regime.
And there was so much to do. He had desired the throne and its duties with all his heart; but now that he had had his wish, he was awed by the boundless tasks he faced.
“I hardly know where to begin,” he confessed, looking up wearily at Septach Melayn and Gialaurys.
The three of them were in the spacious room, inlaid everywhere with rare woods and strips of shining metal, that was the core of the Coronal’s official suite. The throne-room was for the pomp and grandeur of state; these chambers were where the actual business of being Coronal took place.
Prestimion was seated at his splendid starburst-grained desk of red palisander, and long-legged Septach Melayn lounged elegantly beside the broad curving window overlooking the sweeping, airy depths of the abyss of space that bordered the Castle on this side of the Mount. The thick-bodied, heavy-sinewed Gialaurys sat hunched on a backless bench to Prestimion’s left.
“It’s very simple, lordship,” said Gialaurys. “Begin at the beginning, and then continue to the next thing, and the next, and the one after that.”
Coming from Septach Melayn, such advice would have been mockery; but big steadfast Gialaurys had no capacity for irony, and when he spoke, in that deep, slow, gritty rumble of a voice of his, the words flattened by the blunt accents of his native city of Piliplok, it was always with the greatest seriousness. Prestimion’s mercurial little companion, the late and much lamented Duke Svor, had often mistaken Gialaurys’s stolidity for stupidity. But Gialaurys was not stupid at all, just ponderously sincere.
Prestimion laughed amiably. “Well said, Gialaurys! But which thing is the first one, and which the next? If only it were that easy to know.”
“Well, Prestimion, let us make a list,” said Septach Melayn. He ticked things off on his fingers. “One: appointing new court officials. On which we’ve made a fairly good start, I’d say. You’ve got yourself a new High Counsellor, thank you very much. And Gialaurys here will be a superb Grand Admiral, I’m sure. Et cetera et cetera. Two: repairing the prosperity of the districts that suffered damage during the war. Your brother Abrigant has some thoughts on that subject, incidentally, and wants to see you later in the day. Three—”
Septach Melayn hesitated. Gialaurys said at once, “Three: doing something about bringing Dantirya Sambail to trial.”
“Let that one go for a while,” Prestimion said. “It’s a complicated matter.”
“Four,” went on Gialaurys, undaunted: “Interviewing everyone who fought on Korsibar’s side in the late war, and making certain that no lingering disloyalties remain that could threaten the security of—”
“No,” said Prestimion. “Strike that from the list. There never was any war, remember? How could anyone still be loyal to Korsibar, Gialaurys, when Korsibar never existed?”
Gialaurys offered a scowl and a grunt of displeasure. “Even so, Prestimion—”
“I tell you, there’s nothing to worry about here. Most of Korsibar’s lieutenants died at Thegomar Edge—Farholt, Mandrykarn, Venta, Farquanor, all that crowd—and I have no fear of the ones who survived. Navigorn, for instance. Korsibar’s best general, he was. But he begged forgiveness right on the battlefield, do you recall, when he came up to surrender just after Korsibar was killed? And sincerely so. He’ll serve me well on the Council. Oljebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul—they sold out to Korsibar, yes, but they don’t remember doing it, and they can’t do any harm now in any case. Duke Oljebbin will go to the Labyrinth and become High Spokesman for the Pontifex, and good riddance. Gonivaul gets sent into retirement in Bombifale. Serithorn’s useful and amusing; I’ll keep him around. Well, who else? Name me the names of people whom you suspect of being disloyal.”
“Well—” Gialaurys began, but no names came to his lips.
“I’ll tell you one thing, Prestimion,” said Septach Melayn. “There may not be any Korsibar l
oyalists left around, but there isn’t anybody at the Castle, other than the three of us, who’s not seriously confused in some way by the witchery that you invoked at the end of the war. The war itself is wiped from everyone’s mind, yes. But they all know that something big happened. They just don’t know what it was. A lot of important men are dead, whole huge regions of Alhanroel are devastated, the Mavestoi Dam has mysteriously given way and flooded half a province, and yet everybody has been given to understand that there’s been a smooth and uneventful transition from Confalume’s reign to yours. It doesn’t add up right, and they know it. They keep running up against that big throbbing blank place in their memories. It bothers them. I see mystified looks coming over people’s faces right in the middle of a sentence, and they stop speaking and frown and press their hands against the sides of their heads as if they’re groping in their minds for something that isn’t there. I’ve begun to wonder if it was such a good idea to remove the war from history like that, Prestimion.”
This was a subject Prestimion would have preferred not to discuss. But there was no avoiding it now that Septach Melayn had wrestled it out into the open.
“The war was a terrible wound to the soul of the world,” said Prestimion tautly. “If I had left it unexpunged, grievances and counter-grievances would have been popping up forever between Korsibar’s faction and mine. By having all memories of the war wiped clean, I gave everyone a chance to make a fresh start. To borrow one of your own favorite phrases, Septach Melayn, what’s done is done. We have to live now with the consequences, and we will, and that’s all there is to it.”
Inwardly, though, he was not so sure. He had heard disquieting reports—everyone had—of strange outbreaks of mental imbalance here and there on the Mount, people attacking strangers without motive in the streets, or bursting into uncontrollable sobbing that went on for days and days, or throwing themselves into rivers or off cliffs. Such tales had come in lately from Halanx and Minimool, and Haplior also, as though some whirling eddy of madness could be spiraling outward and downward from the Castle to the adjacent cities of the Mount. Even as far down the Mount as Stee, it seemed, there had been a serious incident, a housemaid in some rich man’s mansion who had leaped from a window and killed two people standing in the street below.