Lord Prestimion Read online

  “How strange,” said Prestimion uncomfortably.

  “Then, too, we’ve had a great many unusual episodes of irrational behavior, even violence, in the city itself—actual fatalities, even—” Thaszthasz shook his head. A look of pain appeared on his smooth, normally serene face. “It goes beyond my understanding, my lord. There have been no changes here that might have brought about such upheavals. I confess I find it distasteful and disturbing.—Tell me, lordship, have you heard similar reports from other districts?”

  “From some, yes,” said Prestimion, who, distracted by the strange new scenery all about him, had managed to put this entire issue out of mind since leaving the Labyrinth. It was unpleasant to have to confront it once again. “I agree: the situation is troublesome. We are conducting investigations.”

  “Ah. And no doubt will have important conclusions to share with us shortly.—Can it be some kind of sorcery, do you think, that has caused all this, my lord? That is my theory, and a sound one, I think. What else could have robbed so many people of their reason all at once, if not a great witchcraft that some dark force has cast across the land?”

  “We are giving it our closest attention,” said Prestimion, this time putting enough sharpness into his tone so that Thaszthasz, long experienced in the ways of power, could see that the Coronal wished to end the discussion. “Let me turn to another matter, now, Prince Thaszthasz, which is in fact the purpose for which I have ventured into your lovely forest—”

  11

  “He certainly was quite cool about it,” said Septach Melayn in some dudgeon, as they were making their way out the southern end of the rain-forest country. “Oh, yes, of course, the celebrated Procurator,” he said, in devastating high-pitched mimicry of Prince Thaszthasz’s bland, unperturbable style of speech. “‘What a remarkable person he is! And what a season this has been for unexpected visits by the greatest citizens of the realm!’ Hadn’t he heard a thing about the coastal blockade? Or the interdiction line that we’ve run from Bailemoona to Stoien?”

  “He knew,” said Abrigant harshly. “Of course he knew! He just didn’t want to get himself into a quarrel with Dantirya Sambail. Who would? But it was his responsibility to detain the Procurator until—”

  “No,” Prestimion said. “We were too dainty in our announcements. We sent word to port officials to detain him if they saw him, but we never said any such thing to people like Thaszthasz who hold authority inland across Dantirya Sambail’s most probable route to the sea. And now we see the result of our delicacy. By failing to name Dantirya Sambail openly as a fugitive from the law, we’ve made it possible not only for him to slip through to the coast, but for him to enjoy the hospitality of princes along the route.”

  But Abrigant persisted. “Thaszthasz should have known that we wanted him. He should be punished for his negligence in—”

  “In what?” Gialaurys demanded. “In inviting the ruler of the entire western continent to sit down and have a meal in his palace? If we don’t come out and say that Dantirya Sambail’s a criminal who needs to be brought to trial, why should we expect anybody to assume that he is?” Gialaurys shook his head heavily. “Even if he knew, why would he meddle? Dantirya Sambail’s big trouble for anyone, and Thaszthasz obviously has no stomach for trouble. He may not even have had an inkling of the whole affair. He lives out here in his jungle listening to the lovely rain come down, and nothing else matters to him at all.”

  “There is still the hope,” said Maundigand-Klimd, “that someone has been bold enough to seize Dantirya Sambail at one of the coastal ports.” And, since no one cared to deny that possibility, they put the subject aside.

  They were entering the territory of Aruachosia, now, along the southern coast of Alhanroel. The sea was only a few hundred miles away, and every breeze brought them its salty tang and sultry warmth. This was a humid, steamy land; great stretches of it, swampy and insect-plagued and covered by tangled thickets of saw-edged manganoza palms, were virtually uninhabitable. But in the western part of the province there was a cone-shaped domain of relatively temperate country leading down to Sippulgar, the main seaport of the southern coast, which lay athwart the boundary between Aruachosia and its neighbor to the west, the province of Stoien.

  Golden Sippulgar, it was always called. This has been a golden journey indeed, thought Prestimion: the golden bees of Bailemoona, the yellow sands of Ketheron, the golden hills of Arvyanda, and now golden Sippulgar as well. All very picturesque; but thus far they had little to show for their efforts other than fool’s gold. Dantirya Sambail had hopped blithely on and on ahead of them, unhindered in any way, and by now very likely had slipped through the port blockade as well and was on the high seas, heading home for his own private kingdom in Zimroel, where he would be virtually impregnable.

  Did this continued pursuit make any sense? Prestimion wondered. Or should he halt at this point and hasten back to the Castle? The duties of kingship awaited him there. Dantirya Sambail’s defiance was not the only problem confronting him; there was a real crisis in the land, evidently, a plague, an epidemic. But the Coronal and his closest advisers were off once again in outlying districts engaged in a fruitless search that might better be carried on by other means.

  And then—Varaile—the great unanswered question of his life—

  For a moment, then and there, Prestimion resolved to turn at once from his quest for the Procurator. But no sooner had the thought come to him than he thrust it from him. He had followed Dantirya Sambail’s track this far, through desert and jungle, through one golden land after another: he would keep going, he decided, at least until he reached the coast, where he might obtain some reliable account of the Procurator’s movements. Golden Sippulgar would be the last point on his journey. To Sippulgar it was, then; and then homeward, homeward to the Castle, homeward to his throne and his tasks, homeward to Varaile.

  Sippulgar was called “golden” because the facades of its multitude of sturdy two- and three-story buildings were fashioned without exception from the golden sandstone that was quarried in the hills just to its north. Just as the metallic leaves of the trees of Arvyanda, gleaming under the potent tropical sun, turned that region into a realm of brilliant gold, so too did the warm mellow stone of Sippulgar, glinting with bits of micaceous matter, yield a dazzling golden glow in the full brightness of the day.

  It was in every way a city of the far south. The air was moist and heavy; the plantings that lined the streets and clustered about the houses were superabundantly lush, and offered up a riot of bewilderingly colorful blooms in a hundred different shades of red, blue, yellow, violet, orange, even dark maroon and a pulsating, shimmering black so intense that it seemed the quintessence of color rather than the total absence of it. The people were black, too, or, at least, dark, their faces and limbs all showing evidence of the sun’s hot touch. Sippulgar was beautifully situated, in a curving bay along the blue-green shore of the Inner Sea, crowded with ships from every part of the world. This stretch of southern Alhanroel was known as the Incense Coast, for everything that grew here was fragrant in one way or another: the low plants right along the shore that produced khazzil and the balsam known as himmam, and the forests not far inland of cinnamon trees and myrrh, thanibong trees, scarlet fthiis. All of these exuded such a plenitude of aromatic oils and gums that the air itself about Sippulgar seemed perfumed.

  Prestimion’s arrival in Sippulgar was not unexpected. He had known from the beginning of this southern journey that no matter which route he took from the Labyrinth, he would eventually have to reach the coast here, unless information were to reach him along the way that led him to follow Dantirya Sambail in some other direction. And so the city’s highest official, who bore the title of Royal Prefect, had a majestic suite ready for him in the governmental palace, a substantial building of the local sandstone with a sweeping view of the bay.

  “We are, my lord, prepared to meet your every need, both material and spiritual,” the Prefect said at once.r />
  Kameni Poteva was his name: a tall, hawk-faced man with not an ounce of fat on him, whose white robe of office was decorated with a pair of jade amulets of the kind known as rohillas and a sewn band of holy symbols. Sippulgar was a superstitious city, Prestimion knew. They worshipped a god who represented Time here, in the form of a winged serpent with the ferocious toothy snout and blazing eyes of the little omnivorous beast called a jakkabole: Prestimion had seen representations of it in several great plazas on his way into the city. There were exotic cults here, too, for Sippulgar was home to a colony of various expatriate beings from the stars, folk whose entire populations on Majipoor were no more than a few hundred all told. One entire street of the Sippulgar waterfront, he had heard, was given over to a row of temples to the gods of these alien people. Prestimion made a mental note to have a look at them before he moved along.

  Septach Melayn came to him that evening as he was making ready for the formal dinner that the Prefect was giving in his honor. “A message from Akbalik, in Ni-moya,” he said, holding out an already-opened envelope. “Very strange news. Young Dekkeret has signed on with the Pontifical bureaucracy and taken himself off to Suvrael.”

  Prestimion stared in bewilderment at the paper in Septach Melayn’s hand without reaching for it. “What did you say? I don’t think I understand.”

  “You remember, don’t you, that we sent Akbalik out to Zimroel to check on whether Dantirya Sambail was fomenting trouble over there? And that at the last moment I suggested that Dekkeret go with him to pick up a little diplomatic experience?”

  “Yes, yes, of course I remember. But what’s this about his taking a job with the Pontifical people? And why Suvrael, of all places?”

  “He’s doing it as a penance, apparently.”

  “A penance?”

  Septach Melayn nodded. He gave Akbalik’s letter a quick glance. “They went hunting steetmoy up in the Khyntor Marches, apparently—that was my idea too, I have to admit—and there was some sort of accident, a local guide-woman killed during the course of the hunt, through some negligence of Dekkeret’s, I gather. Or at least that’s what Dekkeret believes is what happened. Anyhow, Dekkeret felt so bad about it that he decided to go off to the most unpleasant place he knew of in the entire world and carry out some difficult task under conditions of extreme physical discomfort, by way of atoning for whatever it was he felt responsible for causing while he was hunting in the northlands. So he bought himself a ticket to Suvrael. Akbalik tried to talk him out of it, of course. But it happened that the Pontifical people in Ni-moya were looking for some young official willing to undertake a ridiculous mission to Suvrael to find out why the Suvraelinu hadn’t been meeting their quota of beef exports lately, and when one of Dekkeret’s friends who worked for the Pontificate found out that Dekkeret was going to Suvrael anyway, he arranged to get him a temporary commission on the Pontifical staff, and off he went. He’s probably landed in Tolaghai by now. The Divine only knows when he’ll be back.”

  “Suvrael,” Prestimion said, shaking his head. Fury was mounting in him. “An act of penance, he says. The young idiot! By all the demons of Triggoin, what’s wrong with him? He belongs at the Castle, not running around in that blasted desert wasteland! If he felt some need to atone, the Isle of Sleep’s the usual place for such things, isn’t it? And a much shorter trip, too.”

  “I suppose the Isle seemed like too tame a place for him. Or maybe going there never occurred to him.”

  “Then Akbalik should have suggested it. Suvrael! How could he have done that? I had plans for that boy! I’ll hold Akbalik responsible for this!”

  “My lord, Dekkeret is very headstrong. You know that. If he had his mind made up to go to Suvrael, you could not have dissuaded him yourself.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Prestimion, trying now without much success to get his irritation under control. “Perhaps.” Scowling, he swung about and stared out the window. “All right. I’ll deal with young Dekkeret when and if he gets back from this mission of penance of his. I’ll give him something to be penitent about! Reporting on Suvraelinu beef exports for the Pontifex! There’s been a drought in Suvrael for years, and the pastures have burned out, and they’ve butchered all their cattle because they can’t feed them, that’s why the beef exports have fallen off! What need does the Pontificate have of sending a man all the way down there just to find out about the obvious? The drought is over, anyway, so I understand. Give them two or three years to rebuild their herds, and they’ll be shipping as much beef as they ever—”

  “The point, Prestimion, isn’t what sort of information the Pontificate thought it needed to gather. The point is that Dekkeret has an exaggerated sense of personal honor and felt obliged to expiate what he believed to be a terrible sin by undergoing prolonged personal suffering. There are worse failings for a young man to have, you know. You’re being really unfair to him.”

  “Am I? I suppose you may be right,” said Prestimion reluctantly, after a little while. “What about Akbalik? What else does he have to report, and where is he now?”

  “He’s heading back from Ni-moya by way of Alaisor at the moment, and says he’ll rejoin us at any place you care to name. As for the Procurator, there’s been no sign of him in Ni-moya, and from what Akbalik’s been able to find out he doesn’t seem to be anywhere in Zimroel yet.”

  “I suppose he’s somewhere on the high seas, then, between here and there. Well, so be it. We’ll deal with him when the time comes. Anything else?”

  “No, my lord.”

  Septach Melayn handed the despatch to Prestimion, who took it without looking at it and tossed it to a nearby table. Turning his back on Septach Melayn once again, he glared toward the water as if he could see all the way to Suvrael from here.

  Suvrael! Dekkeret has gone to Suvrael!

  Such foolishness, Prestimion thought. He had thought so highly of the boy, too, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Normork assassination attempt, when Dekkeret had seemed so stalwart, so quick, so fundamentally capable. And now this! Well, perhaps it could be chalked off to youthful romanticism. Prestimion almost felt sorry for the young man, off there in the sun-baked southern continent, which from all reports was a miserable arid place of sand dunes and stinging insects and scorching winds.

  The memory awoke in Prestimion of his own disagreeable wanderings in the Valmambra Desert of the north after the great defeat at Mavestoi Dam, the darkest hour of the Korsibar war. He had suffered grievously in the Valmambra: had dropped finally into a delirium of fatigue and starvation, and would surely have perished if another two or three days had gone by before he was found. That journey through the Valmambra had been the most arduous event of Prestimion’s life.

  And yet they said that Suvrael, any part of it, was ten times worse than the Valmambra. If so, then Dekkeret would certainly find there the ordeal that he craved for the sake of purifying his soul. But what if it took him the next five years to get himself out of Suvrael and back to the Castle? What would become of all his youthful promise, then? For that matter, what if he were to die down there? Prestimion had heard tales—everyone had—of inexperienced wayfarers who had strayed from some desert path and, lost without drinking water in Suvrael’s blast-furnace heat, met their deaths within just a few hours.

  Well, Dekkeret was probably able to look after himself. And Septach Melayn was right: it was a pardonable exploit, at least in one so young. The Suvrael adventure might be the making of him, if he survived it. It would toughen him; it would give him a deeper perspective on life and death, on responsibility and obligation. The best hope Prestimion had was that the boy came quickly to forgiving himself, down there, for his northlands mishap, and returned to the Castle in a reasonable period of time ready to take on the duties that were waiting for him.

  The main issue for Prestimion, here in golden Sippulgar, was Dantirya Sambail. And the Prefect Kameni Poteva lost no time sharing such news as he had of the Procurator’s whereabouts, although it was,
alas, no news at all.

  “At your request, my lord, we have raised an embargo against him at every port along the coast. Since we received word from you concerning the emergency, no ship has left Sippulgar bound for Zimroel without a complete check of the entire passenger manifest being undertaken by my port officials. Dantirya Sambail was not seen. We have also run checks on any ship leaving here for other ports along the Alhanroel coast that serve the Zimroel trade. The result was the same.”

  “What ports are those?” Prestimion asked. The Prefect spread a map of southern Alhanroel before them. “They all lie west of here. We can eliminate the other direction. As you see, my lord, here is Sippulgar near the provincial border separating us from Stoien, and this, here, is eastern Aruachosia. Running onward still farther to the east lie the provinces of Vrist, Sethem, Kinorn, and Lorgan. The only port of any significance along that entire coastal stretch is Glystrintai, in Vrist, and the only ships that sail out of Glystrintai come here. So if the Procurator had been foolish enough to go eastward when he reached the coast, he would only have come back here anyway, and we would have taken him into custody.”

  “And to the west?”

  “To the west, my lord, is the province of Stoien, developing into the Stoienzar Peninsula. We find just a few widely spaced ports along the southern Stoien coast, because the great heat, the insects, the impenetrable saw-palm jungles, have discouraged settlement. In a span of close to three thousand miles we have only the towns of Maximin, Karasat, Gunduba, Slail, and Porto Gambieris, none of them of any consequence. If the Procurator had emerged from Kajith Kabulon at any of those and attempted to buy passage to some port farther west, we would certainly have had word of it; but no one resembling Dantirya Sambail has been seen in any of them.”

  “What if he didn’t come as far overland as the southern coast, though?” Septach Melayn wanted to know. “What if he simply turned in a westerly direction farther up, and headed for one of the ports on the northern side of the peninsula? Would that have been possible?”