She said, “I was the one put Korsibar up to taking the crown. Did you know that, Prestimion? I stood behind him and pushed. He would never have done it, but for me.”
“Dantirya Sambail said something of the sort to me about that,” he said. “It makes no difference. This is not the moment to speak of it.”
“It was a great mistake. I know that now. He was not a fitting man to be king.”
“This isn’t the moment to speak of such matters,” Prestimion said again. “Leave them for the historians to discuss, Thismet.” He took a step toward her, arms outstretched. Coolly, she waved him away, telling him with a quick gesture to remain where he was. And then, with a smile that was like the sun emerging after a storm, she slipped the sheer white gown from her body and stood bare before him.
She seemed so small: scarcely breast-high to him, with slender limbs, and a waist that emphasized the fragility of her body by the sharpness of its inward curve above the flaring hips. And yet even so, her body looked taut and trim and strong, an athlete’s body, wide shoulders like her brother’s, lean sinewy muscles, elegant graceful proportions. But for all that, she was utterly feminine. Her breasts were small, but full and round and high, with little hard nipples, virginal-looking ones. Her skin was dusky. Her hair below had the same glossy glint as above, a dense, curling black thatch.
She was perfect. He had never imagined such beauty.
“So many years we were strangers to each other,” she murmured. “‘Good morning, Lady Thismet,’ you would say, and I, ‘Hello, Prince Prestimion,’ and that was all. All those years at the Castle, nothing more than that. What a waste! What a sad and foolish waste of our youth!”
“We’re still young, Thismet. There’s plenty of time to make new beginnings now.” Once more he stepped close to her, and this time she made no retreat. His hands ran across the satin smoothness of her skin. She pressed her lips tight to his and he felt the fiery dart of her tongue, and her fingers raking his back.
“Prestimion—Prestimion—”
“Yes.”
8
TWO MORE WEEKS passed in the camp at Gloyn. Then came word from the scouts Prestimion maintained all across the land that Lord Korsibar had come down out of the Mount with an enormous army and begun marching westward. The hierax-riding sons of Gornath Gehayn went aloft on the backs of their giant birds and confirmed it. a great troop of warriors, coming this way.
A pair of messages reached Prestimion’s camp not long afterward, written on the crisp parchment paper used by Coronals and bearing the starburst seal.
One was addressed to Prestimion himself, and warned him to end his rebellion once and for all and surrender himself immediately to the nearest agents of the government so that he might be put on trial for treason. The penalty for failure to surrender, Prestimion was told, was death upon capture for him and for all his high captains who claimed allegiance to him; if he alone yielded himself now, the lives of his chief officers would be spared.
The other message was for the Lady Thismet. It informed her that her august and gracious brother the Coronal Lord Korsibar forgave her for her transgression in having gone to consort with the enemy, and was herewith offering her a pledge of safe conduct across the continent if she chose to return to the Castle and resume her former life of ease and content at the court.
“Well, then,” Prestimion said lightheartedly, when he had read both these documents aloud to his officers, “our choices are clear, aren’t they? I’ll leave for the eastern provinces at once, and go before Korsibar wherever I find him and throw myself upon his mercy. And I’ll take his sister with me and deliver her up safely to him, notifying him with solemn oaths that I return her in the same condition in which she came to me.”
There was laughter from all sides of the campfire, and the loudest of all came from Thismet.
The wine, no fine Muldemar stuff now but only the good rough blue-gray wine of nearby Chistiok Province that came in long flasks made of klimbergeyst-leather, was passed around the cirde once again, and they all sat quietly for a while, drinking. Then Gialaurys said, “Do you intend to wait here for Korsibar to come here to us, Prestimion, or do you think it’s better to carry the war to him wherever we find him?”
“To him,” said Prestimion unhesitatingly. “This flat country is no place to fight a great battle. We’d all go running foolishly hither and yon.”
“And it would disturb the animals of these pleasant plains,” said Septach Melayn. “They’ve had enough trouble on our account already. Prestimion’s right: we go to him.” Prestimion looked about the group.
“Is there opposition? I hear none. Very well: we break camp at dawn tomorrow.”
That was a massive task, for it was a mighty army now that had come together in the peaceful Vale of Gloyn. It took more than a single day to strike the tents and load the floaters and wagons and assemble the pack-animals and get the great eastward journey underway.
But a far mightier army, by all reports of Prestimion’s agents in the field, was heading toward them. Not only had Korsibar mobilized the general army of the provinces surrounding the Mount, but also he had at his service the armies brought from Zimroel by Dantirya Sambail under the command of his brothers Gaviad and Gaviundar, and, furthermore, the private forces controlled by the lords Oljebbin, Gonivaul, and Serithorn.
“Even Serithorn!” Prestimion said. “Gonivaul I can understand: he’s never been a great friend of mine. Oljebbin, well, he’s cousin to Korsibar’s father, after all. But Serithorn—Serithorn—”
“This is Dantirya Sambail’s doing,” said Septach Melayn. “Since the breaking of the dam, he’s been at the Castle, stirring up the lords into confusion. Surely they’re all frightened of opposing him. If Dantirya Sambail has cast in his lot with Korsibar, how can they dare do otherwise?”
“Which says much for the power of family ties,” Duke Svor observed. “For the Procurator, as I recall, is some cousin of yours, is he not, Prestimion?”
“A very distant one,” replied Prestimion. “And growing more distant every hour. Well, it makes no difference, a few more private armies here and there standing with Korsibar. The people are with us, eh? The world’s had nothing but trouble since Korsibar made himself Coronal, and everyone knows it. The hands of citizens lifted against citizens, the crops falling off because men are marching up and down bearing weapons when they should be tilling the fields, the government in paralysis—an inept Coronal and a bewildered Pontifex—”
“There’s the most pitiful thing of all,” said Gialaurys. “Old Confalume who was such a splendid Coronal, now reduced to wreck and ruin as he hides in the Labyrinth while his magnificent worthless son brings the world down around himself What must he think? I feel such sorrow, that Confalume’s great reign should have ended in this miserable turmoil.”
Svor said, “Perhaps he perceives very little of what’s been going on. I like to think that some magus of Korsibar’s—Sanibak-Thastimoon, most likely—has cast a perpetual veil over his mind, and the old man goes through his days and nights as though in a dream. But it’s sad all the same, for those of us who remember what Confalume once was.”
“Sad indeed, Svor. What a strange road we’ve all traveled since then!—Yes, boy?” Prestimion said.
A messenger had come running up, bearing a rolled scroll in his hand. Prestimion took it from him and read it through.
“A new edict from Lord Korsibar, is it?” Septach Melayn asked.
“No, nothing like that. It’s from our venerable maguses Gominik Halvor and his son. They’ve cast the runes for our enterprise. The most auspicious place for us to engage Korsibar in battle, they say, is between the Trikkalas and the Mount, at a place called Thegomar Edge, by Stifgad Lake in the province of Ganibairda.”
“I know that place,” said Gynim of Tapilpil. “We reach it by way of Sisivondal, and southeastward from there in the direction of Ludin Forest The people there raise stajja and lusavender, and other such basic things. Th
at’s where your strongest support lies, my lord, with the fanning folk who want nothing more than for the world to return to normal.”
“Then we’ll take ourselves to Thegomar Edge,” Prestimion said, “and invite Korsibar to visit us there.”
“Tell me, Prestimion,” said Septach Melayn, “do the good mages offer us any reading of the omens foretelling the success of our venture?”
“Oh, yes,” Prestimion said, with the quickest of glances at the scroll in his hand, a mere flick of his eyes. “Everything augurs favorably for us. On our way, then! The province of Ganibairda! Stifgad Lake! Thegomar Edge!”
The eastward march had something of the character of a grand processional about it for Prestimion. The people of the cities along his path hailed him almost everywhere as a liberator as he rode in an open floater in their midst with Thismet beside him, and cheered him onward to his rendezvous with Korsibar.
These were the people who had felt such fear when news first went out that the Pontifex Prankipin was dying; and those fears had proved to be justified. Trouble of some sort would follow the old emperor’s death, they had believed; and the trouble had come. Their maguses had told them there would be chaos, and there was. From every province came reports of factional strife, diminished crops, widespread anxiety and even panic.
It was clear to Prestimion that the people of Majipoor were sorely weary by now of the strife between the rival kings, which had brought such harm to the general prosperity in this time of uncertainty and hostility. And also he saw that the enormity of Korsibar’s sin in appointing himself Coronal had belatedly had its impact on the common folk of the world. A growing number of them now understood Korsibar to be the author of their troubles, and not just those who subscribed to the tale of his being a secret Shapeshifter, though there were plenty enough of those. There was no one who did not desperately want the world to be restored. They looked to Prestimion as the one to put things in balance.
And also there were the nightly sendings of the Lady Kunigarda, attacking Korsibar and Confalume and praising Prestimion. Kunigarda’s words still carried great weight in the world, especially since the new Lady of the Isle, Roxivail, had not yet begun to speak to their minds. Roxivail had taken possession of the Isle, it seemed, but she had not yet managed to establish herself there in the functions of the Lady.
Despite all these things in his favor, Prestimion felt no assurance that the crown of Majipoor was going to topple into his hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The people might be with him, yes. Popular support for his cause might well be increasing every day. But there was no automatic victory in that It still remained for him to deal with the full power of Korsibar’s army. An awesome foe waited for him in the east.
* * *
The journey east retraced of necessity much of the route that Thismet and Melithyrrh had taken during their flight from the Castle. The women were not at all pleased at seeing all those drab rural places that once again stirred such dark memories of hardship in them, but there was no help font, and at least they were traveling this time in more comfort and safety than before. One city after another went by Khatrian, Fristh, Drone, Hunzimar—Gannamunda, Kessilroge, Skeil—they were in the dry dusty plateau of Sisivondal now, and then Sisivondal city.
At Sisivondal, that dreary place of giant warehouses of a single design, where the streets were lined with grim dull camaganda palms and prosaic lumma-lumma bushes by way of decoration, the cultists who went by the name of the Beholders staged a great festival for Prestimion, what they called the Procession of the Mysteries. It would have been a grave insult to refuse, and so he let himself be given the place of honor as the singers and dancers came forth, the girls in white who scattered halatinga blossoms on the ground, the giantess in winged costume who bore the two-headed holy wooden staff, the veiled initiates with waxed and shaven heads.
The mayor of the city explained each step in the ceremony to him, and Prestimion nodded solemnly and watched with the greatest show of deep interest Impassively he looked on, saying little, as the sacred implements of the Beholders were carried before him, the lamp of flame, the serpent of palm fronds, the disembodied human hand with the middle finger bent backward, and the enormous male organ carved from wood, and all the rest Even after Triggoin, Prestimion found these things unsettling. There was a madness to the frenzy of the dancers, and a strangeness to the objects they revered, that were difficult for him to accept.
“Behold and worship!” the marchers cried.
And, while Prestimion watched in silence, from the onlookers came an answering cry: “We behold! We behold!”
The Ark of the Mysteries was next, carried on a wooden pole by two great Skandars, and then, on his cart of ebony and silver, the masked Messenger of the Mysteries himself, naked, painted black down one side and gold down the other, carrying the serpent-entwined staff of his power in one hand and a whip in the other.
“Behold and worship!” the Messenger cried.
And from the Mayor of Sisivondal at Prestimion’s side came the response: “We behold! We behold!”
Thismet cried it also, this time: “We behold! We behold!” And nudged Prestimion sharply with her elbow, and nudged him again, until at last he cried it out too: “We behold!”
And now Thegomar Edge, by Stifgad Lake, in Ganibairda.
In this place a high hill, steep and heavily forested on its eastern face, sloped down more gently to the west into a broad marshy region called Beldak, which had the lake lying at its back. The road from the west came running around the border of the lake and traversed the marsh to ascend the Thegomar hill, going across the summit of it near its southern side.
All during the night Prestimion marched eastward through the farming land of Ganibairda Province toward Thegomar, and just at dawn, as he was nearing the western shore of the lake, news was brought to him that Korsibar was already here with his formidable force and in position on the hill.
“How did they know we were heading this way?” Septach Melayn demanded angrily. “Who is the spy in our midst? Smoke him out, and flay him alive!”
“We are not the only ones with scouts in the field,” said Prestimion calmly. “Or maguses to search for the omens, for that matter. We have our information and Korsibar has his. It makes no difference.”
“But he holds the high ground,” Septach Melayn pointed out.
Prestimion was undisturbed even by that. “We’ve charged high places from below before, haven’t we?And this time he has no reservoir to drop on us.”
He gave the command, and they continued their advance into Beldak marsh as the morning was born above them.
By first light they could see Korsibar’s forces on high. The whole crest of the hill seemed to be bristling with the spears of an infinite sea of men. At the center, two gigantic banners were unfurled: the green and gold one that marked the presence of the Coronal of Majipoor, and just to its side a second one in royal blue and vivid scarlet on which was emblazoned the dragon emblem of the ancient family to which Korsibar belonged. Other banners fluttered elsewhere on the hill: one at the northern end that Prestimion recognized as Serithorn’s, with Oljebbin’s a little way to the south of it, and the banner of Gonivaul beyond that.
And on the far side of Korsibar’s dragon-banner, down by the southern end of Thegomar Edge, there rose a rippling banner of pale crimson nearly as great in size as Korsibar’s own, with a bloodred moon in its center. It was the banner of the clan of Dantirya Sambail. Prestimion had never thought to see that banner arrayed against him.
He ordered the deployment of the troops to begin at once. In mid-morning, while this was still under way, a man came riding out from Korsibar’s side of the field bearing a herald’s white flag. The message he carried was from the Grand Admiral Gonivaul, who called upon Prestimion to send a representative to midfield for an immediate parley. He suggested Duke Svor as an appropriate choice, indeed particularly requested that Svor be sent.
“Gonivaul’s forsworn six t
imes over,” Gialaurys said at once. “Why waste breath parleying with any such as he?”
“And what will he offer us?” Septach Melayn asked. “Pardons for all, and great estates at the Mount, if we swear to be good children and make no more trouble in the land? Send him your glove, Prestimion.”
But Prestimion shook his head. “We should hear what they have to tell us. It does us no harm to listen. Svor, will you go?”
The little duke shrugged. “If you wish me to, of course I will.”
So Svor rode out to a point in the middle of the open field, and waited there a time, and eventually he caught sight of Gonivaul descending the hill road and approaching him over the marshy ground. The Grand Admiral was so bulked out in armor that he seemed more burly even than Farholt or Gialaurys, and his helmet came down over his forehead so that nothing showed of his face except his eyes and dense black beard. His long jutting jaw thrust outward at Svor like a javelin.
He dropped down heavily beside his mount and for a time simply stood staring at Svor, who waited in silence. Then the Admiral said, “I come at Korsibar’s request, and he specifically asked that I speak with you. He loves you still, Svor do you know that? He talks often of the friendship that there was between the two of you in days gone by. He greatly fears that harm will come to you in the battle today. That possibility much disturbs him.”
“Why, then,” said Svor, “if that’s how he feels, he can disband his troops and take himself elsewhere in peace, and all will be well.”
Gonivaul did not seem amused. “The Coronal Lord Korsibar has sent me out here because he offers his hand to you in peace, Svor. For once, put your mockery aside. It may save your life.”
“Is that what this parley is about? Nothing more than a personal invitation to me to surrender?”