“Did you sleep well, mother?” Prince Akbalik asked.
“As ever. And yourself?”
But it was Tuanelys who answered. “I dreamed of a place where all the trees grew upside down, mother. Their leaves were in the ground and their roots stuck up into the sky. And the birds—”
“Mother was speaking to Akbalik, child,” said Prince Simbilon loftily.
“Yes. But Akbalik never has anything interesting to say. And neither do you, Simbilon.” The Lady Tuanelys stuck her tongue out at him. Simbilon reddened, but would not respond. Fiorinda, watching the family scene from one side, began to giggle.
Akbalik now said, as though there had been no interruption, “I slept very well, mother.” And began to tell her of his schedule for the day, the classes in history and epic poetry in the morning and the archery lesson that afternoon, as though they were events of the greatest importance to the world. When he was done, Prince Simbilon spoke at length of his own busy day to come, punctuated twice by requests from the Lady Tuanelys to pass her serving-dishes of food. Tuanelys had nothing else to say at all. She rarely did. Her life just now seemed almost entirely focused on swimming; she spent hours each day, as much time as she could steal from her schooling, racing fiendishly back and forth in the pool in the east-wing gymnasium like a frenzied little cambeliot. There was something manic about the intensity with which she swam her laps. Her instructor said she had to be halted after a certain time lest she swim herself into exhaustion, because she would never stop of her own accord.
This morning her children’s self-absorption seemed less amusing to Varaile than it usually did. The disturbing report from the Labyrinth cast a somber shadow over everything. How would they react, she wondered, if they knew that their father might suddenly be much closer than ever before to becoming Pontifex, and that they could all find themselves uprooted from their good life at the Castle and forced to move along to the grim subterranean Labyrinth, the Pontifical seat far to the south, before long?
Varaile forced herself to sweep all such thoughts aside.
That Prestimion would one day be Pontifex had been inevitable from the hour that he had been anointed as Coronal and they had placed the starburst crown upon his head. Confalume was very old. He might die today, or next month, or next year; but sooner or later, and more likely sooner than later, his time had to come. Beyond question Akbalik and Simbilon must understand quite well what that would mean for them all. As for Tuanelys, if she did not know now, she would have to learn. And to accept. With high rank comes the obligation to conduct oneself in a royal fashion, even if one is only a child.
By the time she had finished eating Varaile felt fully in command of herself again. It was time now for her morning conference with Prestimion’s ministers: in his absence from the Castle, she served as regent in the Coronal’s stead.
Teotas was waiting for her outside the morning-room.
His face was even more grave than usual today, and its folds and furrows looked as though they had deepened overnight. Once he had resembled his older brother Prestimion so closely that one who did not know them well might almost have taken them for twins, though in truth there was a decade’s gap between them in age. But Teotas had a sharp, hot, brooding temper that Prestimion lacked, and here in his middle years it had carved gulleys in his face that made him seem much older than he was, whereas Prestimion’s skin was still unlined. There was no mistaking Teotas for the Coronal any longer; but it was not easy to believe that Teotas was the younger brother.
“Fiorinda gave you the message from the Labyrinth?”
“Eventually. I think she would rather have hidden it from me altogether.”
“We would all like to hide it from ourselves, I think,” Teotas said. “But from some things there’s no hiding, eh, Varaile?”
“Will he die?”
“No one knows. But this latest event, whatever it is, undoubtedly brings him closer to the day. I think, though, that we have a little more time left to us in this place.”
“Are you saying that because you know that it’s what I want to hear, Teotas? Or do you actually have some hard information? Did the Pontifex have a stroke or didn’t he?”
“If he did, it was a very light one. There was some difficulty in one leg and one arm—his mind went dark for an instant—”
“Fiorinda told me about the leg and the arm. Not about the darkness in his mind. Come on: what else?”
“That is all. He has his mages treating him now.”
“And also a physician or two, I hope?”
Teotas said, shrugging, “You know what Confalume is like. Maybe he has a doctor with him, and maybe not. But the incense is burning round the clock, of that I’m sure, and the spells are being cast thick and fast. May they only be efficacious ones.”
“So do I pray,” said Varaile, with a derisive snort.
They walked quickly down the winding corridors that led to the Stiamot throne-room, where the meeting would be held. The route took them past the royal robing-chamber and the splendid judgment-hall that Prestimion had caused to be constructed out of a warren of little rooms adjacent to the grandiose throne-room of Lord Confalume.
Every Coronal put his own mark on the Castle with new construction. The judgment-hall, that magnificent vaulted chamber with great arching frosted windows and gigantic glittering chandeliers, was Prestimion’s chief contribution to the innermost part of the Castle, though he had also brought about the building of the great Prestimion Archive, a museum in which a trove of historical treasure had been brought together, along the outside margin of the central sector that was known as the Inner Castle. And he had still other ambitious construction plans, Varaile knew, if only the Divine would grant him a longer stay on the Coronal’s throne.
Nevertheless, for all the stupefying grandeur of the glorious judgment-hall and Lord Confalume’s throne-room beside it, Prestimion had preferred since the beginning of his reign to spurn those imposing settings and to hold as many official functions as he could in the ancient Stiamot throne-room, a simple, even austere, little stone-floored chamber that supposedly had come down almost unchanged from the Castle’s earliest days.
As Varaile entered it now, she saw nearly all of the high peers of the realm arrayed within: the High Counsellor Septach Melayn and the Grand Admiral Gialaurys and the magus Maundigand-Klimd, and Navigorn of Hoikmar and Duke Dembitave of Tidias and three or four others, as well as the Pontifical delegate, Phraatakes Rem, and the Hierarch Bernimorn, the representative of the Lady of the Isle at the Castle. They rose as she came in, and Varaile signalled them back into their seats with a flick of her fingertips.
Of the potent figures of the kingdom only Prestimion’s other brother, Prince Abrigant, was missing. In the early years of Prestimion’s reign Abrigant had played an important role in government affairs—it was his discovery of the rich iron mines of Skakkenoir that had been the foundation of much of the great prosperity of the kingdom under Prestimion’s rule—but more recently he had withdrawn to the family estates downslope at Muldemar, the responsibility for which had fallen to him by inheritance, and he spent most of his time there. But all of the others had gathered. The presence of so many great dignitaries here at the Council meeting today intensified the misgivings that Varaile already felt.
Quickly she crossed the room to the low white throne of roughly hewn marble that was the Coronal’s seat, and today, with the Coronal away, was hers as regent. She glanced to her left, where Septach Melayn sat, the elegant long-limbed swordsman who had been Prestimion’s dearest friend since his youth, and who was, next to Varaile herself, the adviser whose word he respected the most. Septach Melayn met Varaile’s gaze uneasily, almost sadly. Gialaurys—Navigorn—Dembitave—they appeared to be uncomfortable too. Only the towering Su-Suheris magus, Maundigand-Klimd, was inscrutable, as always.
“I am already aware,” she began, “that the Pontifex is ill. Can anyone tell me precisely how ill?” She turned her attention toward
the Pontifical representative. “Phraatakes Rem, this news comes by way of you, am I correct?”
“Yes, milady.” He was a small, tidy, gray-haired man who for the past nine years had been the Pontifex’s official delegate at the Castle—essentially an ambassador from the senior monarch to the junior one. The intricate golden spiral that was the Labyrinth symbol was affixed to the breast of his soft, velvety-looking gray-green tunic. “The message arrived last night. There have been no later ones. We know nothing more than what you surely have already heard.”
“A stroke, is it?” said Varaile bluntly. She was never one for mincing words.
The Pontifical delegate squirmed a little in his seat. It was disconcerting to see that polished diplomat, always so unctuous and self-assured, show such a visible sign of distress. “His majesty experienced some degree of vertigo—a numbness in his hand, an uncertainty of support in his left leg. He has taken to his bed, and his mages attend him. We await further reports.”
“It sounds very much like a stroke to me,” said Varaile.
“I can offer no opinion concerning that, milady.”
Yegan of Low Morpin, a stolid, rather humorless prince whose presence on the Council had long mystified Varaile, said, “A stroke is not necessarily fatal, Lady Varaile. There are those who have lived for many years after suffering one.”
“Thank you for that observation, Prince Yegan.” And to Phraatakes Rem: “Has the Pontifex been generally in good health thus far this season, would you say?”
“Indeed he has, milady, active and energetic. Making proper allowance for his age, of course. But he has always been an extremely vigorous man.”
“How old is he, though?” Septach Melayn said. “Eighty-five? Ninety?” He left his seat and edgily began to pace the little room, his long legs taking him from side to side and back again in just a few quick strides.
“Perhaps even older than that,” said Yegan.
“He was Coronal for forty years and then some,” offered Navigorn of Hoikmar, speaking with a wheeze. He once had been a powerful figure of a man, a great military leader in his time, but lately was grown fat and slow. “And Pontifex, now, for twenty years after that, is that not so? And therefore—”
“Yes. Therefore he must be very old,” said Varaile sharply. She struggled to rein in her impatience. These men were all ten and twenty years her senior, and their days of real decisiveness were behind them; her quick-spirited nature grew irritable easily when they wandered into these circuitous ruminations.
To the Hierarch Bernimorn she said, “Has the Lady been informed?”
“We have already sent word to the Isle,” said the Hierarch, a slim, pale woman of some considerable age, who managed to seem at once both frail and commanding.
“Good.” And, to Dembitave: “What about Lord Prestimion? He’s in Deepenhow Vale, I think. Or Bombifale.”
“Lord Prestimion is at present in the city of Fa, milady. A messenger is preparing at this moment to set out for Fa to bring him the news.”
“Who are you going to send?” Navigorn asked. He said it in a thick, blunt, almost belligerent way.
Dembitave gave the old warrior a puzzled look. “Why—how would I know? One of the regular Castle couriers is going, I suppose.”
“News like this ought not to come from a stranger. I’ll bear the message myself.”
Color flared in Dembitave’s pale cheeks. He was Septach Melayn’s cousin, the Duke of Tidias, a proud and somewhat touchy man, sixty years of age. He and Navigorn had never cared much for each other. Plainly he took Navigorn’s intervention now as some kind of rebuke. For a moment or two he proffered no response. Then he said stiffly, “As you wish, milord Navigorn.”
“What about Prince Dekkeret?” Varaile asked. “One would think he ought to know too.”
There was a second awkward silence in the room. Varaile stared from one abashed face to another. The answer was all too clear. No one had thought to tell the heir apparent that the Pontifex might be dying.
“I’m told he has gone off to Normork with his friend Dinitak to see his mother,” Varaile said crisply. “He too should be made aware of this. Teotas—”
He snapped to attention. “I’ll tend to it immediately,” he said, and went from the chamber.
And now? What was she supposed to do next?
Improvising swiftly, she said to the Pontifical delegate, “You will, of course, communicate our deep concern for his majesty’s health, our dismay at his illness, our overriding wish that this episode prove to be only a moment’s infirmity—” She searched for some further expression of sympathy, found nothing appropriate, let her voice break off in mid-statement.
But Phraatakes Rem, deftly taking his cue, smoothly replied, “I will do that, have no fear.—But I beg you, milady, let us not overreact. There was no real urgency in the phrasing of the message I received. If the High Spokesman had felt his majesty’s death to be imminent, he would have put matters in a very different way. I understand the distress that milady might feel over an impending change in the administration, and of course each of us here must feel the same distress, knowing that his role in the government may soon be coming to its end, but even so—”
The deep gravelly rumble that was the voice of the burly, ponderous Grand Admiral Gialaurys cut into the Pontifical delegate’s measured tones. “But what if Confalume really is in a bad way? I point out that we have a magus among us who clearly sees all that is to come. Should we not consult him?”
“Why not?” cried Septach Melayn heartily. “Why should we leave ourselves in the dark?” His distaste for sorcery of all sorts was as well known as the Grand Admiral’s credulous faith in the power of wizardry. But these two, who had been Prestimion’s great mainstays in the war against the usurper Korsibar, had long since come to a loving acceptance of the vast chasms of personality and belief that lay between them. “By all means, let’s ask the high magus! What do you think, Maundigand-Klimd? Is old Confalume about to leave us or not?”
“Yes,” said Varaile. “Cast the Pontifex’s future for us, Maundigand-Klimd. His future and ours.”
All eyes turned toward the Su-Suheris, who, as usual, stood apart from the rest, silent, lost in alien ruminations beyond the fathoming of ordinary beings.
He was a forbidding-looking figure, well over seven feet tall, resplendent in the rich purple robes and jewel-encrusted collar that marked his rank as the preeminent magus of the court. His two pale hairless heads rode majestically at the summit of his long, columnar, forking neck like elongated globes of marble, and his four narrow emerald-green eyes were, as ever, shrouded in impenetrable mystery.
Of all the non-human races that had come to settle on Majipoor, the Su-Suheris were by far the most enigmatic. Most people, put off by their wintry manner and the eerie otherworldliness of their appearance, looked upon them as monsters and feared them. Even those Su-Suheris who, like Maundigand-Klimd, mingled readily with people of other species never entered into any sort of real intimacy with them. Yet their undeniable skills as mages and diviners gave them entry into the highest circles.
Maundigand-Klimd had explained to Prestimion, once, the technique by which he saw the future. Establishing a linkage of some type between his pair of minds, he was able to create a vortex of neural forces that thrust him briefly forward down the river of time, a journey from which he would return with glimpses, however cloudy and ambiguous they could sometimes be, of that which was to come. He entered that divining mode now.
Varaile watched him tensely. She was no great believer in the merit of sorcery herself, any more than Prestimion or Septach Melayn were, but she trusted Maundigand-Klimd and regarded his divinations as far more reliable than those of most others of his profession. If he were to announce now that the Pontifex lay on the brink of death—
But the Su-Suheris simply said, after a time, “There is no immediate reason for fear, milady.”
“Confalume will live?”
“He is not in pr
esent danger of dying.”
Varaile let out a deep sigh and leaned back in relief against the throne. “Very well, then,” she said, after a moment. “We have been given a reprieve, it seems. Shall we accept it without further question, and move on to other things? Yes. Let us do that.” She turned to Belditan the Younger of Gimkandale, the chancellor of the Council, who kept the agenda for Council meetings. “If you will be good enough to remind us, Count Belditan, of the matters awaiting attention today—”
The Pontifical delegate and the Hierarch Bernimorn, whose presence at the meeting was no longer appropriate, excused themselves and left. Varaile now plunged into the routine business of the realm with joyful vehemence.
A reprieve indeed is what it was. A respite from the inevitable. They would not have to leave the sun-washed magnificence of the Castle and its lofty Mount and take themselves down into the dark depths of the Labyrinth. Not now, at any rate. Not yet. Not quite yet.
But at the end of the meeting, when they had finished dealing with the host of trifling matters that had managed to make their way this morning to the attention of these great and powerful figures of the world, Septach Melayn lingered in the throne-room after the others had gone. He took Varaile gently by the hand and said in a soft tone, “This is our warning, I fear. Beyond any doubt the end is coming for Confalume. You must prepare yourself for great change, lady. So must we all.”
“Prepare myself I will, Septach Melayn. I know that I must.”
She looked upward at him. Tall as she was, he rose high above her, a great lanky spidery figure of a man, whose arms and legs were extraordinarily thin and whose slender body had, even now when age was beginning to come upon him, wondrous grace and ease of movement.
Here in his later years Septach Melayn had grown even more angular. There seemed to be scarcely an ounce of unneeded flesh anywhere on his spare, attenuated frame; but still he radiated a kind of beauty that was rare among men. Everything about him was elegant: his posture, his way of dress, his tumbling ringlets of artfully arrayed hair, still golden after all these years, his little pointed beard and tightly clipped mustache. He was a master of masters among swordsmen, who had never come close to being bested in a duel and had on only one occasion ever been wounded, while fighting four men at once in some horrendous battle of the Korsibar war. Prestimion long had loved him like a brother for his playful wit and devoted nature; and Varaile had come to feel the same sort of love for him herself.