“It’s going to take him forever to get here,” Prestimion said. “Why don’t you go into the floater and sit down, Varaile? All this standing around can’t be good for you.” She smiled and entered the car.
Just then something that had been bobbing in and out of Prestimion’s mind for many weeks drifted back into it, something that he had been meaning to ask again and again, without ever quite getting around to it. He peered in after her. “Oh: and one question before you leave, Varaile.—Do you recall, when we were at Inner Temple and I was telling the story of the memory obliteration to my mother and you, I mentioned that the name of the son of Lord Confalume who seized the throne was Korsibar? You seemed very surprised when I said that. Why was that?”
“I had heard the name before. From my father, in his ravings one day. He seemed to think that Confalume was still Coronal, and I told him no, there was a new Coronal now, and he said, ‘Oh, yes, Lord Korsibar.’ ‘No, father,’ I said, ‘the new Coronal is Lord Prestimion, there isn’t any such person as Lord Korsibar.’ I thought it was the madness speaking in him. But then, when you told us that the usurper whose name had been wiped from history by your mages was Korsibar—”
“Yes. I see,” said Prestimion. He felt a sudden shiver of apprehension. “He knew the name. He remembered Korsibar. Can it be, I wonder, that the obliteration is wearing off, that the true past is breaking through?”
That was all he needed right now, he thought. But perhaps only those in the deepest extremity of madness were experiencing such flashbacks; and no one was likely to take what they said very seriously. “My father in his ravings,” as Varaile had just put it. Even so, it was something that he would have to bear in mind. Consult one of his mages about it, he thought: Maundigand-Klimd, or perhaps Heszmon Gorse.
It was a problem for some other time. Akbalik had arrived at last.
He flashed a broad, unconvincing grin. “All ready, are we?” he cried, with a cheeriness that was all too obviously forced.
“Ready and waiting. How’s the leg?” Prestimion asked. He thought it seemed more swollen than it had been the night before. Or was that just an illusion?
“The leg? The leg is fine, my lord. Just a tiny little twinge here and there. Another few days—”
“Yes,” Prestimion said. “Just a tiny little twinge. I think I observed you getting a couple of those tiny little twinges as you were crossing the plaza. Don’t waste any time getting that leg looked at once you’re back at the Castle, eh?” He looked away in an attempt to avoid seeing the enormous difficulty with which Akbalik was entering the floater. “Safe journey!” he called. Varaile and Akbalik waved to him. The vehicle’s rotors began to hum. The other floaters in the caravan were coming now to life also. Prestimion stood in the plaza looking eastward for a long while after the five vehicles had disappeared from sight.
10
“Tell me honestly,” Septach Melayn said, “did you ever expect to see this part of the world again in your life?”
“Why not?” Gialaurys said. They were entering the Kajith Kabulon rain-forest once more, having made the journey southward through Bailemoona and Ketheron and Arvyanda following the same track they had taken two years before. That time, though, they had been Prestimion’s companions on a small exploratory expedition; now they were coming at the head of a great military force. “We serve the Coronal. Prestimion tells us to go here, we go here. He wants us to go there, we go there. If that involves making ten trips to Ketheron the same year, or fifteen to the Valmambra, what should that matter to us?”
Septach Melayn laughed. “A heavy answer to a light question, my friend. I meant only that the world is so big that one never expects to visit the same place twice. Except, of course, going back and forth among the cities of the Mount. But here we are, plodding through the muck of soggy Kajith Kabulon for the second time in three years.”
“I repeat my reply,” said Gialaurys grumpily. “We are here because it is the pleasure of the Coronal Lord Prestimion that we get ourselves down to the Stoienzar, and the shortest way from Castle Mount to the Stoienzar runs through Kajith Kabulon. I fail to see any point to your question. But this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve opened your mouth just to let some noise come out, is it, Septach Melayn?”
“Do you think,” Navigorn said, as much to break the rising tension as for any other reason, “that anyone’s ever lived long enough to see the whole world? I don’t mean just getting from here to the far side of Zimroeclass="underline" the Coronals all do that when they make their grand processionals. I mean going everywhere, every province, every city, the eastern coast of Alhanroel to the western coast of Zimroel, and from the land around the North Pole down to the bottom end of Suvrael.”
“That would take five hundred years, I think,” said Septach Melayn. “Longer, I suspect, than any of us is likely to live. But see: Prestimion has been Coronal just a short while, and already Gialaurys and I have been deep into the east-country of Alhanroel, and then down south as far as Sippulgar, and now we are to have the great pleasure of visiting the beautiful Stoienzar—”
“You are very irritating today, Septach Melayn,” Gialaurys said. “I will ride in a different floater, I think.”
But he made no move to halt the vehicle and leave it, and they continued onward. The forest canopy grew deeper. This was a green world in here, but for the occasional contrast that the brilliant fungi of the treetrunks provided, mainly scarlet in this part of the forest, occasionally a vivid yellow brighter even than the sulfury yellow of Ketheron. Although it was still only early afternoon, the sun was no longer visible through the tightly interwoven vines that linked the tops of the tall, slender trees flanking the road. The unending downpour’s persistent drumbeat sound was making everyone edgy: a light rain, unvarying in its intensity, but continuing hour after hour without a break.
A long line of floaters stretched behind them. Each one was emblazoned with the Labyrinth symbol of the Pontifex, since officially this was not an army, merely a peacekeeping force engaged in a police action, and—officially speaking, at least—it was under the command of the Pontificate. The whole system of enforcing the law was a matter for the Pontificate. There were no armies on Majipoor, just Pontifical troops charged with keeping the peace. The Coronal had no troops of his own beyond those who served as the Castle guard. The army that Korsibar had sent against Prestimion during the civil war had been a greatly expanded and probably unconstitutional version of the Coronal’s bodyguard; the army that Prestimion had assembled in his successful campaign against the usurper was a volunteer militia.
A constitutional expert, one whose nose was buried all the time in the Synods and Balances and Decretals, would probably have raised some objections to the legality of this brigade, too. Septach Melayn had requisitioned these troops from Vologaz Sar, the Pontifex’s man at the Castle, by presenting him with a decree already signed by himself as High Counsellor and Gialaurys as Grand Admiral, acting in the name of the absent Lord Prestimion, and, for good measure, by Navigorn and Prince Serithorn as well.
“I will have to send this to the Labyrinth for countersigning, of course,” Vologaz Sar had said.
“Yes. By all means please do. But we need to leave for the Stoienzar immediately, and we’ll be collecting troops from the various Pontifical encampments along the way. So if you’ll add your own signature here, giving us authorization to levy troops on a strictly provisional basis pending formal approval by the Pontifex—”