He faltered and could not go on.
The Lady said, after a time, “Come here, Prestimion.” She held forth her hands.
He went to her and knelt, and laid his cheek against her thigh and closed his eyes, and she held him and stroked his forehead, as she had years ago when he was a small boy and some cherished pet of his had died, or he had done badly at his archery, or his father had spoken too harshly to him. She had always been able to soothe him then and she soothed him now, taking his anguish from him not only as a mother does, but also with the power invested in her as Lady of the Isle, the power to absolve, the power to forgive.
“Mother, I had no choice but to act as I did,” he said, his voice muffled and thick. “The war had left great resentments. They would have stained my reign forever and ever.”
“I know. I know.”
“And yet—look what I’ve done, mother—”
“Shh. Shh.” She held him closer. Stroked his brow. He felt the force of her love, the strength of her soul. He began to grow calm. She gently signaled him, after a little while more, to rise. She was smiling.
Varaile said, “You told us at the outset that this has to remain a secret. But do you still feel that way? I wonder if you should let the world know the truth, Prestimion.”
“No. Never. It would only make things worse.” He was steadier now, purged by his confession, the trembling and the feverishness gone from him now, his head beginning to clear, though the impact of the vision he had had while wearing the Lady’s circlet would not leave him. He doubted that he would ever be free of it. But what Varaile was suggesting seemed impossible to him. “Not because it would make me look bad,” he said, “although it certainly would. But pile one confusion atop another—take away what little sense anyone may still have of where reality really may lie—I can’t, Varaile! You see that, don’t you? Don’t you, mother?”
“Are you certain?” Varaile asked. “Perhaps, if you spoke out about it at last, your doing it would drive away the nightmares and the fantasies and would establish everyone on solid ground once more. Or else, calling the mages down again, getting them to cast a second spell—”
He shook his head and looked in appeal toward the Lady.
Who responded, “Prestimion’s right, Varaile. There’s no undoing it now, neither by any public action of the Coronal nor by more wizardry. We’ve already seen the kind of unintended consequences that an entirely benevolent act has had. We can’t risk having that happen again.”
“Even so, mother, now we have to deal with those consequences,” said Prestimion. “Only—how, I wonder? How?”
8
They remained for a time at the Isle, and Prestimion made no immediate plan for leaving. The winds were still westerly out of Alhanroel, so that the return voyage would be slow and difficult if he were to set out now.
But also he felt weary and drained by his steadily increasing comprehension of the catastrophe he had caused and the likelihood that there would be no way of repairing the damage. The stain of that, he feared, would darken his name for all time to come.
It had gradually dawned on him, years ago, that it might be possible for him to become Coronal, and that he would be capable of handling the job if he did; and he had then begun to yearn for it with all his heart. And—despite the small interruption created by Korsibar—he had indeed attained the starburst crown, even as Stiamot and Damlang and Pinitor and Vildivar and Guadeloom and all the rest of those whose names were inscribed on the great screen in front of the House of Records in the Labyrinth had done before him. They had ascended to the throne and reigned, more or less gloriously, and each had made his mark on the world’s history and had left visible evidence of his moment of power by adding something tangible to the Castle: the Stiamot throne-room, Vildivar Close, the Arioc watch-tower, whatever; and then they had gone on to be Pontifex for a while, and in the fullness of time they had grown old and died. But had any of them ever brought about a disaster such as he had achieved? His place in history would be unique. He had wanted the reign of Lord Prestimion to go down in history as a golden age; and yet he had contrived to lose his throne before he ever had had it, and had fought a war for it that caused the deaths of uncountable and unthinkable numbers of fine men, along with a few worthless ones—and then, then, when the crown was finally his, he had in a moment of folly done a thing to heal the world of its wound that had made matters infinitely worse than they already were. Oh, Stiamot! he thought. Oh, Pinitor! What a pitiful successor I am to your greatness!
Prestimion drew great comfort in these dark hours from the proximity of the Lady. And so he told her that he had decided to stay at the Isle a little while longer, and a suite of rooms was provided for him and Varaile at Inner Temple.
Ten days passed quietly. Then news reached Third Cliff of the arrival at Numinor of a pilgrim-ship from Stoien. There was nothing unusual in that, in this season of westerly winds. But soon after came a second message from the harbor. An important dispatch for the Coronal had been carried from Stoien aboard that ship, and a courier was hastening up to Inner Temple with it now.
“It’s from Akbalik,” Prestimion said, as he severed the thick waxen security-seal. “He’s been in Stoien all year, you know, running a data-gathering operation, trying to turn up some sort of definite information on the location of Dantirya Sambail. Why would he bother to write to me here, I wonder, unless he’s—oh, Varaile! For the love of the Divine, Varaile—”
“What is it, Prestimion? Tell me!”
He jabbed his finger against the page. “The Procurator’s alive, Akbalik says. And still in Alhanroel. He’s been hiding out all this time somewhere along the southern shore of Stoien province, skulking among the saw-palms and the swamp-crabs and the animal-plants. Making that his base, it seems, for a new civil war!”
Varaile was instantly aflutter with questions. Prestimion raised his hand for silence. “Let me finish reading,” he told her. “Mmm. Coded dispatches intercepted.... A Su-Suheris magus going into some sort of a trance to decipher them.... Full text attached herewith....” He rummaged through the sheaf of papers that Akbalik had sent.
He found it impossible, of course, to make any meaning out of the coded messages themselves, which apparently had been surreptitiously slipped into otherwise innocent cargo manifests. Emijiquk gybpij jassnin ys.? Kesixm ricthip jumlee ayviy? It would take a Su-Suheris with three heads, Prestimion thought, to find any sense in that. But Akbalik evidently had picked the right man for the job; for after his wizard had declared that the secret camp of Dantirya Sam-bail was located along the lower Stoien coast, Akbalik had sent agents to comb that entire region, and they had indeed come upon the Procurator’s camp in the very place where the decoded messages indicated it to be.
“But why do you think it’s gone unnoticed so long?” Varaile asked.
“Do you know what the southern Stoien coast is like? No, why should you? No one in his right mind goes there. No one ever thinks about it. Which is why he has chosen it for his hiding-place, I suppose. They say it’s hot as a steam-bath there. Your very bones will melt in that heat within an hour. There is a tree there, the manganoza, with sharp-bladed leaves—the saw-palm, they call it—that forms thickets so dense they’re impossible to enter. And then, giant insects wherever you walk, and enormous crabs that can snap an unwary man’s ankle in half with one bite. Was there ever a more appropriate place for Dantirya Sambail to take up lodgings?”
“You must hate that man very much,” Varaile said.
Prestimion was surprised by that. Hate? He didn’t think of himself as a hater. The word wasn’t an active part of his vocabulary.