It infuriated Prestimion that he had trapped himself here in Stoien city, unable to take his precious anointed self, or his mother’s, any closer to the zone of peril. Abrigant was back at Muldemar now, exercising the princely responsibilities that had fallen to him when his elder brother became Coronal. And Akbalik, on whom Prestimion had come to rely to the extent that he had begun to think of him as his own successor, surely was somewhere in central Alhanroel by this time, heading for the Castle, weary and perhaps mortally ill from the wound he had suffered in the jungle.
Prestimion had tried to pretend that he needed Akbalik to escort the Lady Varaile back to the Castle to await the birth of her child, just as Akbalik had attempted to persuade Prestimion that his wound was not as serious as it was. But neither of them had been fooled. There were plenty of captains other than Akbalik who could have accompanied Varaile on her journey across Alhanroel. The reason why Akbalik was traveling with her, instead of playing a key role in the attack on Dantirya Sambail’s camp, was that the venom of the swamp-crab was seeping deeper within his body day by day, and the only physicians who could save him were half a world away on Castle Mount.
If Akbalik dies—
Prestimion shook the thought away. He had enough to contend with just now without speculating on contingencies like that. Other beloved friends of his were at risk in the Stoienzar at this moment, while he himself remained cooped up here, wild with the frustration of knowing that he must remain safe behind the lines, where his sacred person would be shielded from the risks of battle. And Dantirya Sambail, surely aware that the moment of reckoning was drawing near, was very likely making ready to burst forth from hiding in all his diabolical fury.
Then, above all, there was the plague of madness steadily spreading through the world, the pernicious disruption that threatened to unhinge everyone’s sanity before it was done, and for which Prestimion alone, however blameless his motives had been, stood responsible. What kind of world had he created, that terrible day at Thegomar Edge, for the son who would soon be born to Varaile and him? What would be the legacy of the Coronal Lord Prestimion to the world, other than a time of the most horrific chaos? The pitiful struttings of the Procurator of Ni-moya were trivial by comparison. It was easy enough to envisage the defeat and overthrow of Dantirya Sambail at the hands of the armies now converging on his camp. But the madness—the madness—he was at his wit’s end for a solution to that!
He heard a knocking at his bedroom door.
Prestimion turned from the window. Someone coming to him at this early hour? What else could it be, but news of some new catastrophe?
“Yes?” he called hoarsely. “What is it?”
From the hallway came the voice of Nilgir Sumanand. “My lord, I beg your pardon for disturbing you, but Prince Dekkeret is here to see you, and he will not wait. It is a very urgent matter, so the prince tells me,” said the aide-decamp, with a certain note of dubiety in his tone. And then another voice, Dekkeret’s, saying impatiently, “No, no, not Prince Dekkeret. Just Dekkeret, that’s all.”
Prestimion frowned. He was rumpled and bleary-faced, stale from the long night’s unrest. “Tell him to wait a moment, will you, while I put myself together a little.”
“I could let him know, if you wish, that it would be better for him to return later in the day.”
Dekkeret seemed to be speaking again out there, explaining something to Nilgir Sumanand in low, emphatically stressed phrases. Prestimion choked back his annoyance. This could go on all morning if he didn’t intervene. He strode to the door and pulled it open. Nilgir Sumanand, looking half-asleep, blinked up apologetically at him. Dekkeret stood just behind the older man, looming up like a wall.
“You see, sir,” Nilgir Sumanand said, “he rousted me up and very insistently declared—”
“Yes. I quite understand. It’s not a problem. You can go, Nilgir Sumanand.”
Prestimion beckoned Dekkeret into his suite.
“I very much regret the earliness of the hour, my lord,” Dekkeret began. “But in view of the gravity of the situation and the importance of this new development, I felt that it would be wrong to wait until—”
“Never mind all that, Dekkeret, and get to the point. If I hear one more groveling apology I’ll explode. Just tell me what all this is about.”
“Someone has come to us in the night from the Procurator’s camp. I think you’ll be very interested in what he’s brought us. Very interested indeed, lordship!”
“Ah, will I be, now?” said Prestimion, ashen-voiced. Already he regretted having allowed himself to be burst in upon this way. Dantirya Sambail had sent a message, evidently. An ultimatum, perhaps. Well, whatever it was, it probably could have kept a little longer.
But Dekkeret was throbbing with barely contained excitement; and that, too, made things worse. Suddenly Prestimion felt an almost paralyzing sense of tremendous fatigue. The sleepless night, the strain of the recent weeks, the onslaught of self-doubt and self-accusation that he had lately launched against himself, all were taking their toll. And there was something about Dekkeret’s youthful bubbling exuberance, his awkward coltish eagerness to please, that intensified Prestimion’s own sense of exhaustion. He was still a relatively young man himself; but right now he felt at least as old as Confalume. It was as if Dekkeret, bounding in here full of energy and vigor and hope, had in just these few moments drained him of whatever vitality he still had left.
It would be cruel and foolish, he knew, to dismiss Dekkeret out of hand. And this ostensible message from the Procurator, though it probably was just some mocking screed, was at least worth hearing about. Wearily Prestimion signaled Dekkeret to proceed.
“When we were at Inner Temple, my lord, you told me that you had donned the silver circlet of your mother the Lady, and had looked out into the mind of the world as she does every night. It was like being a god, you said. The circlet permits the Lady to be everywhere on Majipoor in a single moment, is what you told me. And yet, you said, there are limitations to the godhood of the wearer of the circlet. The Lady can enter the mind of a dreamer and take part in his dream, and interpolate certain thoughts of her own, offer guidance, even a degree of solace. But to shape the dream herself, or to create a dream and implant it in a sleeping mind—no. To give commands to the sleeper that must be obeyed—no. Do I have it correctly, my lord?”
Prestimion nodded. He was maintaining his patience through a supreme effort of self-control.
“And what I told you then, sir, is that the device that Venghenar Barjazid used on me in Suvrael is far more powerful than anything that is available to the Lady, and that if he allies himself with Dantirya Sambail, together they will shake the world to pieces. And as we have recently discovered, lordship, Barjazid has reached the Procurator’s camp, and has begun to use his devilish device on Dantirya Sam-bail’s behalf.”
Prestimion offered a second curt nod. “You tell me a great many things I already know, Dekkeret. Where are you going with all this? There’s been a message, you said, from Dantirya Sambail?”