Lord Prestimion Read online

  “It is miserable work in a miserable place,” he said. “But they toil every hour of the day, handling an immense amount of rock to produce very little gold. And all that labor just for the sake of gold! If only there were more of the stuff, perhaps we could find some way to convert it into useful iron or copper. But as it is, we have just this, suited only for trifling decorative purposes.”

  “And after Sethem,” Prestimion said, “where did you go then?”

  “Eastward still,” replied Abrigant, “into the province of Kinorn, which was not quite a land of deserts but far from pleasant, having been folded again and again by ancient movements of the land so that crossing it was like crossing a giant griddle. We went on and on, ridge after ridge, and there was always the next steep ridge to climb, and we were tossed about in our floaters as though in a storm at sea. This bruise, Prestimion—I struck my head once when our car overturned and thought it would be my death. Some villages had been founded here, too, the Divine only knew why, where the people lived by farming and seemed to have very little knowledge of the great world beyond. They spoke a dialect that was difficult to understand. Zimroel was only a myth to them, and its demonic Procurator unknown; they claimed to know of such places as the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount, and Alaisor and Stoien and Sintalmond and Sisivondal, but it was obvious that their information went no farther than those cities’ mere names. I asked of Skakkenoir, though, and they smiled at that, and said, yes, yes, Skakkenoir, and pointed east. They pronounced the name in a barbarous way that I could never get my tongue to imitate; but the soil there, they said, was bright red. The red of iron, Prestimion.”

  “Of course, the six-month limit expired precisely at that point,” said Prestimion lightly, “and therefore you turned back without investigating any further.”

  “You knew it, brother! That is what happened. But in fact we were actually a few days short of the six months, so we went on a little way. And look, Prestimion!” He put his hand into the knapsack again, taking from it three little glass vials of red sand, and a fourth that contained the dried and crumbling leaves of some plant. “Have this sand analyzed, and I think you’ll find them rich with iron, as much as one part in ten thousand. And the leaves: can these be from the metal-bearing plants of Skakkenoir? I think they are, Prestimion. It was only a small strand of red earth, twenty feet wide at most and soon petering out—one little accidental tongue jutting forth out of the land of Skakkenoir, I think. And half a dozen scraggly little plants growing on that red soil. The real wealth lay still to the east, of that I was sure. But of course I was sworn to turn back on the day the seventh month began, and that day had now arrived, and so I did. I came very close, I believe. But I was sworn to turn back.”

  “All right, Abrigant. You’ve made your point.”

  Prestimion opened the vial of leaves and lifted one out. It looked like nothing more than a dried leaf, such as one would use as a cooking herb. There was nothing metallic about it: one might do better, perhaps, trying to extract gold from the shining shrubs on the hills of Arvyanda that reflected the gold of the sunlight than to get iron from this little wrinkled brown scrap of vegetation. But he would have it analyzed, all the same.

  “There you are,” said Abrigant. “The mines of Skakkenoir are yours for the taking. It is such ugly country, Prestimion, and so forbidding in its heat and its up-and-down landscape: I can see why other explorers gave up too soon. But perhaps they weren’t as eager as I was to find the land of iron. The great prosperity of the age of Prestimion, brother, is in those four vials.”

  “May that truly be so. I’ll have them examined this very day. But even if they prove to bear iron, what then? A bit of red sand and a few leaves won’t take us very far. Skakkenoir itself remains undiscovered.”

  “It lay just beyond the next hill, Prestimion! I swear it!”

  “Ah, but did it, though?”

  Abrigant gave him a stormy look. “I would go again and see. With bigger floaters and a great many more men. And no six-month deadlines, this time. It’s a ghastly land, but I would go, if only you’ll authorize a second expedition. And I’ll bring back all the iron you would ever want to possess.”

  “First the chemical analysis of these little samples of yours, brother. And then we’ll discuss a new expedition.”

  Abrigant seemed to be on the verge of some hot retort; but just then came a knock at the door, the little rat-tat-tat pattern that Prestimion recognized as Varaile’s. He held up his hand to silence his brother before he could speak and crossed the room to admit her.

  She greeted him with a warm hug; and only after they stepped back from each other did she notice that there was someone else in the room.

  “Forgive me, Prestimion. I didn’t know that you were—”

  “This is my brother Abrigant, newly among us again after a difficult journey to the far south, questing after the land of iron. It took him very much by surprise, apparently, to discover that I had married in his absence. Abrigant: here is my consort Varaile.”

  “Brother,” she said unhesitatingly. “How happy I am to know that you’ve returned safely!” And went instantly to him and enfolded him in an embrace nearly as warm as the one she had given Prestimion.

  Abrigant seemed taken aback for a moment by the immediate open-hearted fondness of her greeting, and returned it stiffly and awkwardly at first. But then he took her more wholeheartedly into his arms; and when he released her his eyes were shining in a new way and his fair-skinned face was reddened with confusion and pleasure. It was plain to see that Varaile had won him over in an instant, that he was overwhelmed by the beauty and poise and imposing presence of his brother’s new wife.

  “I was just telling Lord Prestimion,” Abrigant said, “how greatly I regretted missing your wedding. I am the brother nearest to him in age; it would have been my great pleasure to stand beside him when he spoke his vows.”

  “He too regretted it that you could not be there,” said Varaile. “But it was possible you’d be gone a very long while, and no one was sure how long. We both thought it best not to wait.”

  “I quite understand,” Abrigant said, with a little bow. He could not have been more courtly, now. The angry man of a few moments before had utterly vanished. Looking toward Prestimion, he said, “I think we’ve finished our business for now, brother.—I’ll go to my rooms, if I may, and leave you with your lady.”

  His eyes were glowing, and the meaning of that glow was as unmistakable to Prestimion as if it were possible for him to read his brother’s thoughts. You have done well for yourself, brother. This woman is truly a queen!

  “No, no,” Varaile said, “I was just passing by. I wouldn’t want to interrupt your meeting. Surely you two still have much to tell each other.” She blew Prestimion a kiss and started toward the door. “Will we be lunching in the Pinitor Court as usual, my lord?”

  “I think we will. And perhaps Abrigant will join us.”

  “I would like that,” she said pleasantly, and made gestures of farewell to them both, and left the room.

  “How altogether splendid she is,” Abrigant said, still aglow. “I comprehend everything now.—Does she call you ‘my lord’ all the time?”

  “Only when she’s among people unfamiliar to her,” Prestimion said. “A little touch of formality, is all. She’s a very well-bred woman, you know. But we’re on more intimate terms when we’re alone.”

  “I would hope so, brother.” Abrigant shook his head in amazement. “Simbilon Khayf’s daughter! Who would ever believe it? That squalid little man, bringing into the world a woman like that—”

  4

  And now it was summer in the Alhanroel midlands where Castle Mount rose to the heavens, though there was no sign of a change of seasons at the Castle itself, favored as always by its perpetual gentle springtime.

  A deceptive calm had settled there. For the moment, at least, there were no crises to deal with. Prestimion, accustoming himself now to his role as Coronal, met with
delegations from far-off lands, paid occasional visits to the neighboring cities of the Mount, presided over the deliberations of the Council, conferred with the representatives of the Pontifex and the Lady on such matters of government as required his cooperation. The plague of madness continued to claim new victims, but not quite so voraciously as before, and the populace at large seemed to have accepted it as a fact of life, like unduly heavy rainfall that flooded the fields at harvest time, or lusavender blight, or the sandstorms that sometimes ravaged southeastern Zimroel, or any of the other little flaws of existence that made Majipoor something other than a perfect paradise.

  As for Dantirya Sambail, he seemed to have vanished from the face of the world. That he had lost his life somehow in the course of his wanderings through Alhanroel struck Prestimion as being much too good to be true; but he was coming reluctantly to accept the possibility that that might have been what had occurred. The mere thought of a world without Dantirya Sambail caused wondrous serenity and ease to steal over him. At moments of high stress or great fatigue during the course of his daily tasks Prestimion would sometimes pause and think, I am rid forever of Dantirya Sambail, simply for the sake of savoring the tranquility that the words brought to his spirit.

  Varaile, too, had adapted well to the change in her circumstances that marrying Prestimion had brought. The Coronal’s wife had tasks of her own, a full daily round of them. One, though, was self-imposed: a visit to Simbilon Khayf in his comfortable captivity in the guest-house in the northern wing of the Castle near Lord Hendighail’s Hall, every morning before going on to that day’s regular chores.

  The man who once had been the richest citizen of Stee, and whose grand mansion in that city had been the object of universal envy and admiration, now lived in just five modest rooms far from the center of Castle life. But he did not seem to care, or even to notice. Simbilon Khayf’s days of striving were over. He gave no indication even of remembering the power that had been his, or the fierce driving ambition that had led him to it, or the multitude of little vanities by which he had announced to the world that Simbilon Khayf was a force to be reckoned with.

  Each day now he was born anew into the world. Yesterday’s experiences, such as they had been, had been washed from his mind as completely as the tracks that birds make at low tide along the sandy shore of the Inner Sea. His morning nurse awakened him and bathed him and dressed him in a simple white robe, and gave him his breakfast, and took him for a short walk along Lord Methirasp’s Parapet, the broad cobblestoned terrace behind his residence. Usually Varaile arrived just as he was returning from that.

  This morning, as every morning, Simbilon Khayf seemed relaxed and happy. He greeted her, as ever, with a courteous if absent-minded kiss on the cheek and a brief, fleeting handclasp. Though he remembered little of his former life, he did, at least, generally recall that he had a daughter, and that her name was Varaile.

  “You look well this morning, father. Did you have a good rest?”

  “Oh, yes, very good. And you, Varaile?”

  “It would have been nice to sleep a little longer, but of course I couldn’t do that. We were up very late last night: another banquet, it was, the Duke of Chorg here from Bibiroon, and he’s a great connoisseur of wines. And since Prestimion’s family is famous for its wine, naturally it was necessary to have a whole case of rarities shipped up from Muldemar for the banquet, and the duke, wouldn’t you know, wanted to have a sip from every single bottle—”

  “Prestimion?” said Simbilon Khayf, smiling vaguely.

  “My husband. Lord Prestimion, the Coronal. You know that I’m the Coronal’s wife, don’t you, father?”

  Simbilon Khayf blinked. “You’ve married old Confalume, have you? Why would you have wanted to do that? Isn’t it strange, being married to a man older than your father?”

  “But I’m not,” she said, laughing despite the gravity of the situation. “Father, Confalume isn’t Coronal any longer. He’s gone on to become Pontifex. There’s a new Coronal now.”

  “Yes, of course: Lord Korsibar. How silly of me! How could I have forgotten that it was Korsibar who became Coronal after Confalume?—So you’ve married Korsibar, have you?”

  She stared at him, puzzled and saddened. His damaged mind wandered in the strangest ways. “Korsibar? No, father. Wherever did you get that name from? There isn’t any Lord Korsibar. I’ve never heard of anyone by that name.”

  “But I was sure that—”

  “No, father.”

  “Then who—”

  “Prestimion, father. Prestimion. He’s the Coronal now, the successor to Lord Confalume. And I’m his wife.”

  “Ah. Lord Prestimion. Very interesting. The new Coronal’s name is Prestimion, not Korsibar. What could I have been thinking of? You’re his wife, you say?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How many children do you and this Lord Prestimion have, then?”

  Varaile said, reddening a little, “We haven’t really been married all that long, father. We don’t have any children yet.”

  “Well, you will. Everybody has children. I had one myself, I think.”

  “Yes. You did. You’re speaking with her right now.”

  “Oh. Yes. Yes. The one who married the Coronal. What’s his name, this Coronal you married?”

  “Prestimion, father.”

  “Prestimion. Yes. I knew a Prestimion once. Smallish man, blond hair, very quick with a bow and arrow. A clever sort. I wonder what ever became of him.”

  “He became Coronal, father,” said Varaile patiently. “I married him.”

  “Married the Coronal? Is that what you said: you married the Coronal? How very unusual! And what a step upward in the world for us, my dear. No one in our family has ever married a Coronal before, isn’t that so?”

  “I’m sure that I’m the first,” Varaile said. It was about this time, each visit, when her eyes would begin welling with tears and she would have to turn briefly away, for it was bewildering and upsetting to Simbilon Khayf to see her cry. That happened now. She flicked her fingers across her face and turned back to him, smiling valiantly.

  In recent weeks it had become quite clear to her that she had never actually loved her father in the days when his mind was intact: had not, in fact, even liked him very much. She had accepted the nature of their life together without ever questioning any aspect of it: his hunger for money and glory, his embarrassing social pretensions, his arrogance, his many foolishnesses of dress and speech, his enormous wealth. A prank of the Divine had made her his daughter; another, her mother’s early death, had made her the mistress of Simbilon Khayf’s household when she was still just a girl; and Varaile had accepted all that and had simply gone about the responsibilities that had fallen to her, repressing whatever rebellious thoughts might surface in her mind. Life as Simbilon Khayf’s daughter had often been a trying business for her, but it was her life, and she had seen no alternative to it.

  Well, now the horrid little man who had happened to be her father was a shattered thing, an empty vessel. He too had been the victim of a prank of the Divine. It would be easy enough for her to turn her back on him and forget that he had ever existed; he would never know the difference. But no, no, she could not do that. All her life she had looked after the needs of Simbilon Khayf, not because she particularly wanted to, but because she had to. Now that he was in ruins and her own life had been immensely transformed for the better by yet another of the Divine’s little jokes, she looked after him still, not because it was in any way necessary, but because she wanted to.

  He sat there smiling uncomprehendingly as she told him of yesterday’s Castle events: the meeting in the morning with Kazmai Noor, the Castle architect, to discuss the preliminary plans for the historical museum that Prestimion wanted to build, and then her lunch with the Duchess of Chorg and the Princess of Hektiroon, and in the afternoon a visit to a children’s hospital downslope at Halanx and the dedication of a playground in nearby Low Morpin. Simbilon
Khayf listened, ever smiling, saying now and then, “Oh, that’s very nice. Nice indeed.”

  Then she drew some papers forth and said, “I also had a few matters of private business to deal with yesterday. You know, father, that I’ve been signing all the family enterprises over to the employees, because someone has to run those companies and neither you nor I would be capable of doing that now, and in any case it would never do for the Coronal’s wife to engage in commerce. We transferred seven more of them yesterday.”

  “Oh, very nice,” said Simbilon Khayf, smiling.

  “I have their names here, if you’re interested, though I don’t think that you are. Migdal Velorn was at the Castle—you know who he is, father? The president of your bank in Amblemorn?—and I signed all the papers he brought me. They involved Velathyntu Mills, and the shipping company in Alaisor, and two banks, and—well, there were seven. We have just eleven companies left, now, and I hope to be rid of them in another few weeks.”

  “Indeed. How good of you to take such care of things.”

  His constant smile was unnerving. These visits were never easy. Was there anything else she needed to tell him today? Probably not. What difference did it make, anyway? She rose to leave. “I’ll be going now, father. Prestimion sends his love.”

  “Prestimion?”

  “My husband.”

  “Oh, you’re married now, Varaile? How very nice. Do you have any children?”

  On a fine golden morning toward the end of summer Prestimion went downslope to his family estates in Muldemar to attend the great annual festival of the new wine. Every year at that time, by ancient tradition, the newly made wines of the previous autumn’s vintage were brought out for their first tasting, and a lively day-long celebration was held in Muldemar city, capped by a grand banquet at Muldemar House, the residence of the Prince of Muldemar.