Was there anyone, he wondered, whom he had ever hated? Korsibar, perhaps? No, certainly not him. He could make allowances for Korsibar. Korsibar’s astonishing grab for power had angered him greatly, yes, but nevertheless Prestimion had never seen him as anything but a big stupid good-natured blockhead of a prince who had been thrust into a situation far beyond his depth by a pack of sinister self-seeking companions.
And Farquanor and Farholt, then, Korsibar’s vile henchmen, whom the world was so much better off without? Had he hated them? he wondered.
Not really. Farquanor had been a nasty little schemer, and Farholt a great swaggering bully. Prestimion had disliked them very much. But hatred was not what he had felt for them. He doubted even that he had hated Sanibak-Thastimoon, whose dark conjurations had made so much trouble for the world, and who, in fact, was the one who had taken Thismet’s life. But there had been a sword in Thismet’s hand when she died. Would Sanibak-Thastimoon have killed her if she had not attacked him?
That hardly mattered now. But one did not hate people for being stupid, as Korsibar had been, or sly like Farquanor, or a blustering fool like Farholt. And Sanibak-Thastimoon had believed he was serving his master Korsibar’s best interests: should he have hated the Su-Suheris for that? One did not hate people at all, ideally: one simply disagreed with them, and prevented them from doing harm to you and yours, and went on about one’s business.
What about Dantirya Sambail, though, the real author of so many of the world’s misfortunes? Did the word apply to him?
“Yes,” Prestimion said. “That one I do hate. He’s evil through and through, that man. You can see it just by looking at him: those amazingly beautiful deceitful eyes, softly glowing at you out of that fat ugly face. He should never have been born. In a moment of idiotic foolishness I spared his life at Thegomar Edge, and in another I allowed his blotted-out memory of the war he waged against me to be restored; but I would gladly call both those decisions back, now, if only I could.”
He paced back and forth in mounting agitation. Merely thinking about the Procurator set him into a furious frenzy.
The treacheries of Dantirya Sambail had provided fresh support again and again for the Korsibar faction, when otherwise the usurper might have fallen through his own ineptitude. At every turn in the civil war, there Dantirya Sambail had been, devilishly engineering some new betrayal or defection. It was the Procurator who had sent his own two loathsome brothers, the drunken Gaviad and the great ugly Gaviundar, to lead armies on Prestimion’s side, covertly instructing them to transfer their allegiance at a critical moment. It was Dantirya Sambail who had incited Korsibar to the breaking of the Mavestoi Dam. It was he who—
“The man is a monster,” Prestimion said. “I might be able to understand it if he had rebelled out of simple greed, out of the crude and blatant hunger for power. But he already rules a whole continent; he has wealth beyond anyone’s comprehension. Nothing drives him except motiveless hatred, Varaile. He seethes without reason with an inner venom that poisons his every act. And he forces us to meet hatred with hatred. It’s hardly even two years since we’ve emerged from the civil war, and we still suffer the aftereffects of that; and here he is making ready for a second one! What else can one feel but hatred for such a man as that? I will destroy him, that I vow, Varaile, if ever I get the chance again.”
He was shaking with the force of his anger. Varaile poured wine for him, sweet golden wine of Dulorn, and pressed her fingertips against his temples until he grew more calm.
“You’ll be going to this Stoien place, then, won’t you, to make war on him?” she asked.
Prestimion nodded. “Akbalik’s sent a copy of these dispatches to Septach Melayn at the Castle by now. I don’t doubt that he and Gialaurys are already assembling an army to march down into the south-country. In any case I’ll have orders to that effect going off to them this very day.”
Already the strategy was taking form in his mind.
“One army coming in from the northwest by way of Stoien city, going down on a diagonal across the peninsula, and a second one south through Ketheron and Arvyanda and Kajith Kabulon to the Aruachosian coast, the route we took last year, and then westward from Sippulgar into Stoien province—yes. Yes. Hem him in from two sides at once. And then—”
There was a knock at the door. “Shall I answer?” Varaile said.
“Who would that be? Well, yes, answer it.—Meanwhile,” Prestimion continued, “I’ll sail for Stoien city as fast as I can and rendezvous with Akbalik there, and join the troops who’ll be setting out for—yes?” he said.
Varaile had gone to the door. An acolyte stood there, holding a message.
“What is it?”
Later word from Akbalik, perhaps? Prestimion broke the seal and scanned it quickly.
“Anything important?” Varaile asked.
“I’m not sure. Your young friend Dekkeret’s here. He’s made some kind of helter-skelter journey from the Castle to Alaisor and come racing across from Alaisor to the Isle aboard one of the express-mail ships. He’s asked special dispensation to come to you up here, and the Lady has granted it. Right now he’s on his way up Second Cliff. They expect him here later today.”
“Were you expecting him?”
“Not at all. I don’t have any idea at all why he’s come, Varaile. He says here that he has to meet with me immediately, but he doesn’t tell me why. Why is it that I doubt that the news he’s traveled halfway around the world at top speed to bring me is going to be anything cheerful?”
Dekkeret’s face, so earnest and boyish not so long ago, had hardened now. His whole demeanor was more reserved and poised. Since Prestimion’s first encounter with him at Normork, Dekkeret had traveled endlessly across the face of the world; and now, though he looked more than a little the worse for wear after the furious haste of his latest journey, he radiated an aura of strength and purpose as he entered into Prestimion’s presence and offered him the salute of allegiance.
“I bear greetings from the High Counsellor Septach Melayn and from the Grand Admiral Gialaurys, my lord,” was how he began. “They ask me to tell you that they have received certain information from Akbalik at Stoien city concerning Dantirya Sambail, and that they’ve begun to make preparations for military action while awaiting your explicit instructions.”
“Good. I’d have expected nothing less.”
“You yourself are aware, then, sir, of the Procurator’s location?”
“The news from Akbalik reached me only this morning. I’m preparing orders to send to the Castle.”
“There has been a new development, lordship. The Barjazids have escaped, and are on their way to the Stoienzar to offer their services to Dantirya Sambail. They have the mind-controlling device with them.”
“What? But they were prisoners in the tunnels! Is that place such a sieve, that anyone can walk out of it at the snap of a finger? Anyone but me, it would seem,” Prestimion added under his breath, remembering his own bitter time of captivity there.
“They had been released from the tunnels some time ago, sir. They were living as free men in the north wing of the Castle.”
“How could that have been possible?”
“Well, sir, apparently it happened like this—”
Prestimion listened in mounting disbelief and dismay as Dekkeret told him the tale.
That shifty-eyed little man Venghenar Barjazid, in the days before the civil war, had lived at the Castle in the retinue of Duke Svor. During his imprisonment in the Sangamor he had somehow made contact, so it seemed, with another former follower of the late duke, who had drawn up fraudulent papers ordering the release of Barjazid and his son from the tunnels and their transfer to modest accommodations in one of the residential sectors of the Castle.