“Then why Mandralisca?”
“I told you. It is my habit, my ancient custom. Forgive me, cousin,” said Dantirya Sambail, looking soulfully blave-eyed at him, all meek and repentant. “If this is poison, it is the finest for flavor the world has ever seen. I pray you give me another draught; for if it doesn’t kill me, it will give me keen pleasure.” The Procurator laughed again, thrusting his strong-featured face upward into Prestimion’s and grinning a broad savage grin as Prestimion refilled his bowl to the brim. “And where are those three comrades of yours, the spider-legged dandified swordsman whom no one can touch, and the great ape of a wrestler, and the other one, the sneaky little Tolaghai duke? I thought you were never apart from them.”
“They’ve gone off hunting. We had no notice of your coming, you know. But they’ll be with us presently. Meanwhile we can talk, kinsman to kinsman, with none of your flunkeys around to listen to us.” Prestimion contemplated his bowl a moment. “I look a fool, you said. Is that so? Do I really seem such a fool to all the world, Dantirya Sambail? I was never named Coronal-designate, you know. Korsibar stole the crown, sure enough: but can it be said that he stole it from me?”
“If it please you, cousin, he stole it from the air, then,” said Dantirya Sambail. He reached out and helped himself to yet another bowl of wine. Standing close by Prestimion, he seemed to loom, not so much on account of his height as from the massiveness of his torso and the confidence of his spread-legged stance. The pale skin of his heavy-featured face was already turning ruddy and glistening from the drink, making his dusting of orange freckles seem less apparent, and creating an even deeper contrast with his extraordinary violet-hued eyes. But the steadiness of those eyes told Prestimion that the Procurator was still altogether sober, however he might seem affected outwardly by the wine. In a cheerful, almost friendly tone he said, “What are your plans, eh, Prestimion? Will you try to knock Korsibar from his perch, do you think?”
“I had hoped you might advise me on that,” said Prestimion smoothly.
“You do have plans, then!”
“Not plans. Intentions. Not intentions, either: possible intentions.”
“Which will require a possible army, and powerful possible allies. Here, drink with me, cousin, keep pace, don’t leave me to do it all!—Tell me what’s in your heart, dear Prestimion!”
“Would that be wise of me?”
“I trusted you with my life when I drank your wine. Speak, and fear nothing, cousin.”
“I will be very blunt and plain with you, then.”
“Do be. By all means, do.”
It was no secret to anyone that Dantirya Sambail was the blackest of scoundrels; but Prestimion had long since learned that one good way to disarm a villain was to open your heart utterly to him. He was therefore resolved to be totally frank with the Procurator.
“Item one,” Prestimion said, “I should have been Coronal. There’s no one from one end of the planet to the other who would deny that. I am the best qualified candidate. Korsibar is far from that.”
“And item two?”
“Item two, Korsibar’s done something foul and dark and blasphemous by crowning himself like that. Such deeds inevitably are repaid on high. Perhaps, if luck is with us, he’ll undo himself swiftly through his own stupidity and arrogance: a very bad combination, that. But otherwise he will in time bring the anger of the Divine crashing down upon us all, if we allow him to reign unchecked.”
Dantirya Sambail said, with a comical blink, “The anger of the Divine, you say? The anger of the Divine? Ah, cousin, and all this time I mistook you for a rational, skeptical man!”
“It’s well known I have no use for sorcerers and suchlike flummery. To that extent I’m a skeptic; but that doesn’t mean I’m godless, Dantirya Sambail. There are forces in the universe that punish evil: this I do believe. The world will suffer if Korsibar’s left to go unopposed. My own private ambitions aside, I feel he must be taken down, for the good of all.”
“Ah,” said the Procurator, lifting his shaggy red brows high. And an instant later said again, as he often did: “Ah. —Is there an item three?”
“Those two are enough. There you have it, within the span of two minutes.” Prestimion helped himself to wine, and gave Dantirya Sambail more, when the bowl was held out to him for it. “My plans. My intentions. A profession of my faith even. What will you do, run back to Korsibar and give him warning now?”
“Hardly,” the Procurator said. “Am I such a treacherous pig that I’d give testimony against my own kinsman? But you face a perilous hard task here.”
“How hard, would you say?” Prestimion asked, staring once more into his wine-bowl and swirling it about. “Give me your most realistic assessment. Shield me from nothing.”
“I am ever a realistic man, cousin. Disagreeable perhaps, but realistic.” The Procurator held up his thick-fingered hand and ticked his points off one by one. “Item, as you would say: Korsibar holds the Castle, which is close on unassailable and has great value in people’s hearts all across the land. Item: with control of the Castle goes control of the Castle guard. Item: the army too is with him, for the army is a great headless beast, loyal to whichever man it is that wears the crown, and Korsibar is the one who wears it now. Item: Korsibar is a fine dashing fellow and the general populace seems to admire him. Item: he’s been well schooled in Castle protocols and routines all his life. All in all he’ll probably make a decent enough Coronal.”
“On that last we are not in agreement.”
“So I understand. But I’m less given to trusting to the mercy and wisdom of the Divine than you are. I think Korsibar can probably do the job, more or less. He’s got such as Oljebbin and Serithorn around him to remind him of the proper way, and crafty little Farquanor’s a shrewd asset too, whether you like him or not. That Su-Suheris magus of Korsibar’s is another clever architect of strategy, very dangerous indeed. And there’s also the sister to reckon with, don’t forget.”
“Thismet?” Prestimion said, in surprise. “What about her?”
“You don’t know? That one’s the true force in that family,” Dantirya Sambail said with a flash of his square stubby teeth. “Who was it, do you think, pushed poor blockhead Korsibar into grabbing for the crown in the first place? The sister! The lovely Lady Thismet herself! Whispering in his ear, all the while we were in the Labyrinth, poking him and prodding him and nudging him and chivvying him, filling what passes for his mind with much inflammatory talk of his surpassing virtues and lofty destiny, shoving him onward and onward until he had no choice but to make his move. Ah, she’s a fierce one, that sister.”
“You have this for a fact?”
The Procurator turned his hands outward in a gesture of pious sincerity. “I have it on the finest of authority, that is, my own. I overheard them conniving together myself, during the games. He’s as helpless as a grazing blave before her. She drives him like a herdsman, and he goes where she says.”
“He’s a secret weakling, that I know. But I never knew her to be so strong-willed.”
“You never knew her, cousin. She loves Korsibar above all else. Her twin, after all: entwined together in their mother’s womb. Would surprise me not if there were not something incestuous between them even. But also there’s her hatred for you to add to the equation.”
Prestimion was unexpectedly stung by that. That Thismet would have loyalty to her brother, and ambitions on his behalf, was no surprise. But loyalty and ambition for the one should not necessarily translate themselves into loathing for the other.
“Hatred—for me—?”
“Did you ever refuse her, Prestimion?”
“I’ve known her many years. But never in any close way. I admire her beauty and grace and wit, of course, as does everyone else. Perhaps more than most. Nothing’s passed between us, though, not ever, of an intimate kind.”
“That may be the problem. She may have been saying something to you all along that you’ve been unwilling to
hear. They will hold terrible grudges against a man who does that to them, you know. But be that as it may: those are your obstacles. The world is with Korsibar. You have nothing to your own advantage but your conviction that you are the true and proper Coronal, and your superior intelligence and determination, and, I suppose, your faith that the Divine wants to see you sitting on the throne. Though I must say that in that case the Divine has taken a very strange way of putting you there. If the Divine were more direct in attaining the fulfillment of its will, Prestimion, it would be a duller world, I suppose, but I’d have less difficulty believing in the existence of such great supernatural forces that govern our destinies. Eh?”
“You think I’ll fail at gaining the throne?”
“I said only that it would be far from easy. But go, plunge into it, make the attempt. I am with you, if you do.”
“You? You’re on your way to Zimroel even now to make the way easier for Korsibar!”
“So he’s asked me to do. What I will really do there is a different matter.”
“Let me understand this. Are you actually offering me a pledge of support?” Prestimion asked, incredulous.
“There’s a bond of blood between us, boy. And also love.”
“Love?”
Dantirya Sambail leaned toward Prestimion and smiled the warmest of smiles. “Surely you know I love you, cousin! I see my own beloved mother when I look at yours: they could have been sisters. We are nearly of one flesh, you and I.” Those strange violet eyes stared into Prestimion’s with incandescent intensity. There was terrible sinister force there: but also that mysterious tenderness. “You are all I would have wanted to be, if I could not have been myself. What joy it would give me to behold you atop the Castle in the place of that ninny Korsibar! And I will do all in my power to put you there.”
“What a fearsome monster you are, Dantirya Sambail!”
“Ah, yes, that too. But I am your monster, dearest Prestimion.” Yet again he refilled his bowl without being asked. “Come sail for Zimroel with me this very hour. Ni-moya will be the base from which you launch your war against Korsibar. Together we’ll raise an army of a million men; we’ll build a thousand ships; we’ll stand side by side as we cross the sea, and we’ll march together toward the Castle like the brothers we truly are, and not the distant and sometimes unfriendly cousins the world imagines us to be. Eh, Prestimion? Is that not a wonderful vision?”
“Wonderful, yes.” Prestimion chuckled. Coolly he said, “You want to goad me into strife with Korsibar so that he and I will destroy each other, which will leave a clear path to the throne for you. Is that not it?”
“If I had wanted the throne, ever, I would simply have asked Lord Confalume to give it to me when he was tired of sitting on it. I’d have done that long before you were old enough to get your hands all the way around a woman’s breasts.” The Procurator’s face was scarlet now, but his voice was steady; he seemed calm and merely amused. “Who else was in line for it? That fool of an Oljebbin? Confalume would have put the crown on a Skandar before he gave it to him. But no, no, I had no use for Castle Mount. The Coronal can have that, and I have Zimroel, and we are both content.”
“Especially if you can say that the Coronal owes his crown to you, eh?”
“Ah, you impugn me and impugn me, dear Prestimion. You waste too much precious breath attacking my motives, which sometimes in fact are pure ones. Perhaps this good wine of yours muddles your mind. Let us come to basics: you want to be king, and I offer you my help, both as your loving kinsman who would support you in all things, and also out of a powerful conviction that the throne is rightfully yours. The forces at my disposal are not inconsiderable. Tell me here and now: do you accept my offer or refuse it?”
“What do you think? I accept it.”
“What a sensible boy. Now, then: will you come with me to Zimroel and create a military base for yourself there?”
“No, that I will not. Once I leave Alhanroel it may not be so easy for me to return. And this is my home; I’m most at ease here. I’ll stay here, at least for the time being.”
“Whatever way you would have it, then.” Dantirya Sambail smiled broadly and brought one great hand down with a loud clap against the table. “There! Done! It’s wearisome hard work, offering you help. Will you feed me now, at least?”
“Of course. Come.”
As they left the cellar the Procurator said, “Oh, and one thing more. The Coronal Lord Korsibar intends to summon you shortly to the Castle to attend his coronation ceremonies.”
“Does he, now?”
“I have it from Farquanor himself. Iram of Normork will be carrying the invitation. Perhaps he’s already on his way to Muldemar. What will you tell him, cousin, when it comes?”
“Why, that I’ll go.” Prestimion threw him a quizzical look. “What would you have me do, cousin?”
“To go, of course. Anything else would be a coward’s course. Unless, that is, you plan to reveal your breach with Lord Korsibar so soon.”
“It’s far too early for that.”
“Then you have no choice but to go to the Castle, eh?”
“Exactly.”
“It pleases me greatly that we’re of a mind. —And now, Prestimion: food. No small quantity of it, if you please.”
“You have my promise on that, cousin. I know your appetites, I think.”
* * *
They feasted well at Muldemar House that night, though Prestimion had had more than enough to eat and drink already, these few days, with the guests who had been to him before Dantirya Sambail. But he held his own, and saw the Procurator and his retinue off in good grace the next day, after which he retired to his study with his three companions to assess the meaning of the meetings that had just been held. For hours they spoke, and might have gone on far into the evening without even troubling to have dinner; but then came an interruption, a servant knocking at the door with word for Prince Prestimion.
“Count Iram of Normork is here,” he said. “He bears a message for you from the Coronal Lord.”
1
KORSIBAR HAD been in residence at the Castle for five days before he first brought himself to climb the steps that led to the Confalume Throne.
The throne was his by legitimate right: he had no doubt of that, or hardly any. Now and again, in the night, he awakened in a chilly sweat, having had some new sending of the Lady to unsettle his sleep, or even just a troubled recurrent dream that did not seem to be a sending, in which someone had arisen before him and pointed a jabbing finger and said to him, “Why is your father’s crown sitting there above your ears, Prince Korsibar?” But in his waking hours he had no difficulty looking upon himself as king. He had the crown, which he wore some part of every day, so that others would get accustomed to seeing him with it. He garbed himself in a Coronal’s robes, green and gold, with ermine trim. When he went to and fro in the halls, they all made starbursts to him, and averted their eyes, and said, “Yes, my lord,” and “Of course, my lord,” to everything he might choose to say.
Yes, he was the Coronal Lord. There could be no doubt of it. A little residual surprise over it still lurked in his soul, perhaps: for he had been from the day of his birth simply Prince Korsibar, with no hope of rising to anything beyond that, and now all of a sudden he was Lord Korsibar, and the swiftness and newness of it clung to him. But there was no denying those starbursts, or those averted eyes. He was truly Coronal.
All the same, he somehow refrained from ascending the throne itself those first four days.
There was a great deal for him to do away from the throne room. Supervising the transfer of his private quarters, for one thing, from his old suite on the far side of the Pinitor Court to the Coronal’s much grander apartments, a virtual palace within the Castle, in the wing known as Lord Thraym’s Tower.
Korsibar had often wandered those splendid rooms, of course. But then they had been filled with his father’s uncountable hoard of strange and rare things, the little d
ragon-ivory sculptures that he loved so much and the shimmering statuettes of spun glass and the collections of prehistoric artifacts and the mounted insects, bright as jewels, in their frames, and the massive volumes of esoteric lore and all the rest, the fine porcelains and the incomparable Makroposopos weavings and the cabinet containing silver coins of all the rulers, Pontifex on one side and Coronal on the other, going back to the dawn of time.
None of that was here now, though, for Lord Confalume had known when he went down to the Labyrinth to await Prankipin’s death that he was never going to return to Lord Thraym’s Tower as Coronal: he had taken many of his collections with him on the journey, and the rest had gone into storage, or into the Castle museum. So Korsibar found the Coronal’s rooms bare and strangely forbidding when he entered them for the first time after coming to the throne. He had never noticed before how off-putting those harsh groins of gray-green stone could seem, how bleak the bare black flagstone floors.
Therefore in these first days he had set about filling the place with things of his own. He had never been much of an acquirer, though. Lord Confalume, in his forty-three years at the Castle, had insatiably collected whatever had struck his fancy, and there had been all the gifts flooding in from every quarter of the world besides.
But by choice and temperament Korsibar owned very little other than his wardrobe of fine clothing and his array of hunting and sporting equipment, his bows and swords and the like. His furniture was commonplace—Thismet had often chided him about that—and of paintings, bowls, carvings, draperies, and the like he had hardly anything at all, and what little there was of it, quite ordinary. That needed to be remedied. Living in bare stone rooms of such magnitude as these would be a depressing business. He called for Count Farquanor, who was glad to be of service in almost any capacity, and said, “Find me something to fill this place. Get pieces out of the museum, if you have to. But nothing famous, nothing that will attract envious comment. Let them be decent-looking things, that’s all I ask, no eyesores, nothing radical, just pleasant things that will make these rooms look like a place where somebody actually lives.”