Abrigant looked puzzled. “He said that, did he? Well, not exactly. I know that certain places here and there around Alhanroel are in bad shape, all of a sudden. But I don’t know the whys and wherefores of any of that, except for a few obvious things like the collapse of the Mavestoi Dam and the flooding of the Iyann Valley. The rest’s a mystery to me, what might be causing these sudden local outbreaks of food shortages, or whatever. The will of the Divine, I suppose.”
Statements of that kind troubled Prestimion, and he was hearing them more and more often. But what could he expect, when he had kept everyone around him in ignorance of the major event of the era? Here was his own brother, one of his most intimate friends, whom he hoped would also become, eventually, one of his most useful advisers, a member of the Royal Council. And he knew nothing of the war and its effects. Nothing!
A great civil war had devastated great sectors of Alhanroel for two whole years, and Abrigant had no inkling that it had ever occurred. Living in such darkness, how could he be expected to make rational decisions about public affairs? For a moment Prestimion was tempted to confess the truth. But he checked himself. He and Septach Melayn and Gialaurys had agreed most vehemently that they should be the only ones to know. There could be no revelations after the fact, not now, not even for Abrigant.
“You’re not here to talk about remedies for the afflicted provinces, then?”
“No. What I have are ideas concerning ways to increase the general economic well-being of the entire world. If all the world grows wealthier, then the distressed districts will be helped along with everyone else. Which must be what led Septach Melayn to misunderstand my purpose.”
“Go on,” said Prestimion uncomfortably.
This new earnestness of Abrigant’s was very strange in his ears. The Abrigant he knew was energetic, impetuous, even somewhat hot-headed. In the struggle against the usurping Korsibar he had been a valiant, ferocious warrior. But a man of ideas, no. Prestimion had never known his brother to show much aptitude for abstract thought. An athlete, was what he was. Hunting, racing, sport of all kinds: that was where Abrigant’s interests always had lain. Perhaps maturity was coming upon him faster than Prestimion had expected, though.
Abrigant hesitated. He seemed uncomfortable too. After a moment he said, as if reading his brother’s mind, “I’m well aware, Prestimion, that you think I’m a pretty shallow sort. But I do a lot of reading and studying now. I’ve hired experts to tutor me on matters of public affairs. I—”
“Please, Abrigant. I realize that you’re not a boy any longer.”
“Thank you. I just want you to know that I’ve given a lot of thought to these things.” Abrigant moistened his lips and drew his breath in deeply. “What I have to say is simply this. We’ve enjoyed, of course, a great economic upturn on Majipoor all through Lord Confalume’s years as Coronal, and through Lord Prankipin’s reign before that. A case could be made that we’ve been living through a golden age. But even so, we’re not nearly as prosperous as we ought to be, considering the wealth of natural resources we have here, and the overall tranquility of our political system.”
Overall tranquility?
With a terrible war only a few weeks in the past? Prestimion wondered whether there was some irony there—whether Abrigant might remember more of the recent events than he was letting on. No, he thought. There was not the slightest trace of ambiguity in Abrigant’s steady, earnest gaze. His eyes, sea-green like Prestimion’s own, were focused on him with solemn uncomplicated intensity.
“The big stumbling-block,” Abrigant was saying, “is the scarcity of metals here, of course. We’ve never had enough iron on Majipoor, for example, or nickel, or lead, or tin. We’ve got some copper, yes, and gold and silver, but not much else in the way of metal. We’ve been greatly short-changed in that regard. Do you know why that’s so, Prestimion?”
“The will of the Divine, I suppose?”
“You could say that, yes. It was the will of the Divine to provide most worlds of the universe with good heavy cores of iron or nickel, and those worlds have plentiful supplies of such metals in their crusts, too. But Majipoor’s much lighter within and without. We’ve got light rock, or great airy caverns, where other worlds have those masses of solid metal. And there’s not much metal in our world’s crust, either. This is why gravity doesn’t have a really powerful pull here, even though Majipoor is so big. If this planet was composed of as much metal as other worlds are, people like us would probably be crushed flat by the tremendous force of gravity. Even if we weren’t, we wouldn’t be sufficiently strong to lift a single finger. Not a single finger, Prestimion! Do you follow me so far?”
“I understand something of the laws of gravity,” said Prestimion, amazed at being lectured in such matters by Abrigant, of all people.
“Good. You’ll agree with me, then, that this lack of metals has been something of an economic handicap for us? That we’ve never been able to build spacegoing vessels, or even an adequate system of air and rail transport, because of it? That we’re dependent on other worlds for a lot of the metal we do use, and that this has been costly to us in all sorts of ways?”
“Agreed. But you know, Abrigant, we haven’t really done too badly. No one goes hungry here, big as our population is. There’s ample work for all. We have splendid cities of enormous size. Our society’s been remarkably stable under a worldwide government for thousands of years.”
“Because we have a wonderful climate almost everywhere, and fertile soil, and any number of useful plants and animals both on land and sea. But plenty of people are going hungry right now, so I hear, in places like the Iyann Valley. I hear about bad harvests elsewhere in Alhanroel, empty granaries, factories having to shut down because something has been strange lately about the shipment of raw materials from place to place, and so forth.”
“These are temporary problems,” said Prestimion.
“Maybe so. But such things will put a great strain on the economy, won’t they, brother? I’ve been doing a lot of reading, I told you. I’ve come to understand how one disruption over here can lead to another over there, which causes troubles in a third place entirely that’s very far away, and before you know it the problem has spread all across the world. Which is something you may find yourself facing before you’ve spent many months on the throne, I’m afraid.”
Prestimion nodded. This conversation was getting tiresome.
“And what do you suggest, then, Abrigant?”
Eagerly Abrigant said, “That we bring about an increase in our supply of useful metal, particularly iron. If we had more iron, we could manufacture more steel for use in industry and transportation, which would permit a great expansion of trade both on Majipoor itself and with our neighboring worlds.”
“How is this to be achieved, exactly? By sorcery, perhaps?”
Abrigant looked wounded. “I beg you, brother, don’t be condescending. I’ve been doing a great deal of reading lately.”
“So you keep telling me.”
“I know, for example, that there’s said to be a district somewhere deep in the south, and off to the east of Aruachosia Province, where the soil is so curiously rich in metal that the plants themselves contain iron and copper in their stems and leaves. Which need only to be heated to yield a rich harvest of useful metal.”
“Skakkenoir, yes,” Prestimion said. “It’s a myth, Abrigant. No one’s ever been able to find this wonderful place.”
“How hard has anyone ever tried? All I can turn up in the archives is an expedition in Lord Guadeloom’s time, and that was thousands of years ago. We should go looking for it again, Prestimion. I’m quite serious. But I have other suggestions to make, too. Do you know, brother, that there are ways of manufacturing iron, zinc, and lead out of baser substances such as charcoal and earth? I don’t mean through wizardry, although science of this sort certainly seems to verge on wizardry; but it is science all the same. Research has already been done. I can bring you people who have
achieved such transformations. On a small scale, yes, a very small scale—but with proper backing, generous funds appropriated from the royal treasury—”
Prestimion gave him a close look. This was a new Abrigant, all right.
“You actually know of such people?”
“Well, at second hand, I have to admit. But reliable second hand. I urge you most strongly, brother—”
“No need for further urging, Abrigant. You pique my interest with this. Bring me your metal-making wizards and let me speak with them.”
“Scientists, Prestimion. Scientists.”
“Scientists, to be sure. Though anyone able to conjure iron out of charcoal sounds very much like a magus to me. Well, mages or scientists, whatever they may be, it’s worth an hour of my time to learn more about their art. I do agree with your basic argument. A greater store of metal will make for great economic benefits for Majipoor. But can we really obtain the metal?”
“I’m confident of it, brother.”
“We’ll see about that,” said Prestimion.
He rose and led Abrigant across the richly inlaid floor, artfully decorated with stripes of ghazyn and bannikop and other precious woods, to the door of the office. Abrigant paused there and said, “One more thing, Prestimion. Is it true that our kinsman Dantirya Sambail is a prisoner here in the Castle?”
“You’ve heard about that, have you?”
“Is he?”
“He is, yes. Hidden away snugly in the Sangamor tunnels.”
Abrigant made a holy sign. “You can’t be serious, brother! What insanity is this? The Procurator’s too dangerous a man to treat this way.”
“It’s specifically because he is dangerous that I’ve put him where he is.”
“But to offend a man who wields so much power, and who is so free with his wrath—”
“The offense,” said Prestimion, “was from him to me, not the other way around, and merits what I’ve done to him. As for the circumstances of the offense, those are of no concern to anyone but me. And however much power Dantirya Sambail may wield, I wield more. In the fullness of time I’ll deal with his case as it deserves, I assure you, and justice will be served.—I thank you most warmly for this visit, brother. May it lead to good things for us all.”
6
“And the new Coronal,” Dekkeret said. “What do you think of him, now?”
“What is there to think?” his cousin Sithelle replied. “He’s young, is all I know. And quite intelligent, I hear. We’ll find out the rest as time goes along.—They do say that he’s very short, I understand.”
“As if that matters,” said Dekkeret scornfully. “But I suppose it does, at least to you. He’d never marry you, would he? You’d be much too tall for him, and that wouldn’t do.”
They were walking along the broad rim of the immense impregnable wall of black stone monoliths that surrounded their home city of Normork, which was one of the twelve Slope Cities of the Mount, a long way down the giant mountain from Lord Prestimion and his Castle. Dekkeret was not quite eighteen, tall and strapping, with a powerful broad-shouldered frame and an air of strength and confidence about him. Sithelle, two years younger, was nearly of a height with him, though of a lithe and willowy build that made her seem almost fragile beside her sturdy cousin.
She laughed, a silvery, tinkling sound. “Me, marry the Coronal? Do you suppose any such thing has ever entered my mind?”
“Of course I do. Every girl on Majipoor is thinking the same thing these days. ‘Lord Prestimion is young and handsome and single, and he’ll be taking a consort sooner or later, and why not a girl like me?’ Am I right, Sithelle? No. No, of course not. I’m always wrong. And you’d never admit that you were interested in him if it was so, would you?”
“What are you saying? Coronals don’t marry commoners!” She slipped her arm through his. “You’re being silly,” she said. “As usual, Dekkeret.”
He and Sithelle were the best of friends. That was the problem. Their families had always hoped that they would marry some day; but they had grown up together, and looked upon each other almost as brother and sister. She was a handsome girl, too, with long springy hair the color of fire and bright, mischievous gray-violet eyes. But Dekkeret knew that he was no more likely ever to marry Sithelle than—well, than Sithelle was to marry Lord Prestimion. Less likely, indeed, because it was at least conceivable that she would somehow meet and marry the Coronal, but Dekkeret knew that Sithelle could never be his own choice as a wife.
They strolled along in silence for a time. The wall’s rim was so wide that ten people could walk abreast on the road that ran along it, but there were few others up there now. The hour was getting late, the hour of long shadows. The green-gold orb of the sun was low in the sky and in just a short while it would move around behind the tremendous upjutting mass of Castle Mount and be lost to their view.
“Look there,” Dekkeret said. He pointed downward into the city. They were at the place where the wall, as it followed the craggy contours of the Mount, made a great curve outward to carry past an out-thrusting rocky spur. The ancient palace of the Counts of Normork was tucked into that sweeping bulge.
A low, squat, almost windowless square building of gray basalt, it was, topped by six menacing-looking minarets. It seemed more like a fortress than a palace. Everything in Normork had that look—secure, inward-looking, well guarded—as though the city’s builders had looked upon the likelihood of invasion from some neighboring city as a perpetual threat. The outer wall, Normork’s most famous landmark, enclosed the city like a tortoise’s shell. It was so great a wall that it might almost be fair to call Normork itself an appendage to the wall, rather than speaking of the wall as an aspect of the city.
There was just one gate in the wall that so supremely enfolded Normork, and that was a mingy little thing that since time immemorial had been sealed tight every evening, so that if you didn’t enter the city before dark, you waited until morning. Normork’s wall, so it was said, was patterned after the great one of huge stone blocks, now mostly in ruins, that once had protected the prehistoric Metamorph capital of Velalisier. But thousands of years had gone by since there last had been war on Majipoor. Who were the enemies, Dekkeret often wondered, against whom this colossal rampart had been erected?
“The palace, you mean?” Sithelle said. “What about it?”
Long yellow streamers were draped across the palace’s featureless face. “They’ve still got the mourning badges hanging from the facade,” said Dekkeret.
“Well, why shouldn’t they? It isn’t all that long since the Count and his brother died.”
“It seems like a long time to me. Months.”
“No. Just a few weeks, in fact. I know, it does seem much longer. But it’s not.”
“How strange,” Dekkeret said. “That the two of them should be dead so young.” A boating accident on Lake Roghoiz, so it had been announced, where the princes had been sport-fishing. “Can it be true that the thing really happened the way we were told it did?”
Sithelle gave him a mystified look. “Is there any reason to doubt it? The nobility get killed in fishing and hunting accidents all the time.”
“We are asked to accept that Count Iram hooked a scamminaup so big that it pulled him right into the lake and drowned him. That scamminaup must have been as big as a sea-dragon, Sithelle! I can’t help wondering why he didn’t simply let go of the line. And then Lamiran going in after him to rescue him, and drowning also? It’s all very hard to believe.”
Sithelle said, shrugging, “What purpose would anyone have in lying about it? And what difference would it make? They’re dead, aren’t they, and Meglis is Count of Normork, and that’s that.”
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose so. Odd, though.”
“What is?”
“So many deaths all about the same time. Significant deaths, dukes and earls and counts. But plenty of ordinary people too. My father travels pretty widely up and down the Mount on business, you
know. Bibiroon, Stee, Banglecode, Minimool, all sorts of places. And he tells me that wherever you go, you see the mourning badges hanging from important public buildings and private residences. A lot of people have died recently. A lot. That’s hard to explain.”
“I suppose,” Sithelle said. She didn’t seem very interested.
Dekkeret persisted. “It bothers me. A lot of things do, lately. It’s all been something of a blur, these last weeks, wouldn’t you say? Not just the death of the Count and his brother. The old Pontifex dying too, Lord Confalume taking his place, Prestimion becoming Coronal. Everything seemed to happen so fast.”
“Things weren’t happening fast while his majesty was dying. That seemed to take forever.”
“But once he did die—whiz, bang, all manner of things going on at once, Prankipin’s funeral one week and Lord Prestimion’s coronation practically the next—”
“I don’t think they were actually so close together,” said Sithelle.
“Maybe not. But it seemed that way to me.”
They were beyond the palace, now, coming around to the side of the city that faced outward from the flank of the Mount, affording a glimpse of nearby Morvole on its thrusting promontory. A watchtower set into the wall provided a viewing-point here from which one could see, to the left, the highway winding down through the serrated rocky spine of Normork Crest into the foothills of the Mount, and in the other direction, looking upward, the cities of the next ring. There was even the merest shadowy hint, impossibly high above, of the lofty circlet of perpetual mist that cloaked the upper zones of the great mountain, hiding the summit and its Castle from the eyes of those below.
Sithelle scrambled swiftly up the narrow stone steps of the tower, leaving him well behind. She was a slim, leggy girl, enormously quick and agile. Dekkeret, following her, climbed in a more plodding way. His limbs were relatively short in proportion to his solid, massive torso, and he usually found it wisest to move carefully and unhurriedly.