Prestimion stepped from his floater. Gialaurys was just to his left; capable gray-eyed Akbalik, Prince Serithorn’s nephew, was the officer of the guard at his right. To Prestimion’s surprise, Count Meglis did not stir from his spot. Protocol called for the Count to come forward to the Coronal, not for the Coronal to go to the Count; but Meglis, still grinning, still holding his arms out wide, stood where he was, twenty or thirty paces away, as though he expected Prestimion to ascend the palace steps to him in order to receive his embrace.
Well, why not stand there, fool that he obviously was? What would this man, catapulted upward with so little preparation into his title by the premature deaths both of Iram and his brother, know of court protocol? But someone should have coached him. Prestimion, though rarely a stickler for proper procedure, nevertheless could hardly make the first move himself, and Meglis did not seem to understand what was required of him.
So each maintained his position, and the moment of stasis stretched on and on. Then, just as it began to seem to Prestimion that the deadlock would never end, something unexpected happened. A high female voice from the crowd called out, “Lordship! Lordship!” Prestimion saw a pretty young woman—no, a girl; she was fifteen, sixteen at most detach herself from the front row of the crowd and set out in his direction, carrying an elaborate floral bouquet, crimson-and-gold halatingas and bright yellow morigoins and deep-green treymonions and many more blooms that he could not have named, all woven together in the most beautiful way.
Prestimion’s guards moved immediately to cut off her approach. But her boldness amused him. He shook his head and beckoned for her to advance. Since the squat, ugly Count Meglis was still stupidly waiting up there with grinning face and widespread arms, and seemed to intend to wait like that there forever, it would be a pleasant and diverting interruption of the present awkwardness, Prestimion thought, to accept these splendid flowers from this lovely girl.
She was very attractive: tall and slender—a bit taller than he was himself, he saw—with a great mass of reddish-gold curls cascading about her face and shining gray-violet eyes. Her expression was a charming mixture of fear and awe and eagerness and—yes—love. That was the only word for it. He had never seen such unqualified adoration in a person’s eyes, never.
She was trembling as she extended the bouquet.
“How marvelous they are,” Prestimion said, taking them from her. “I’ll keep them beside my bed tonight.” She flushed a bright scarlet and made a fluttering starburst at him and began to back away, but Prestimion, captivated by the shy and innocent loveliness of her, was not ready to have her go. He took a step or two in her direction. “What’s your name, girl?”
“Sithelle, your lordship.” Her voice was husky with terror. She could barely get the sounds out.
“Sithelle. A lovely name. You live here in Normork, do you? Are you still at school?”
She began to make some sort of reply. But Prestimion was unable to hear whatever she might have said, because in that moment chaos descended on the scene. Out of the multitudes packed close in the plaza a second person abruptly emerged, a thin wild-eyed bearded man who came prancing forward, screaming wildly, bellowing clotted unintelligible words, the gibberish of a lunatic. He was brandishing in his upraised right hand a farmer’s sickle, honed to glittering sharpness. The girl was all that separated Prestimion from him. As the madman came bearing down upon them she turned automatically in the direction of the disturbance and virtually collided with him as she stepped forward.
“Look out!” Prestimion cried.
She had no chance. Unhesitatingly, almost without giving it a thought, the man slashed at her with the sickle, a quick impatient chopping swipe as though he wanted merely to clear her from his path. The girl fell away to one side and slumped to the pavement, kicking convulsively and clutching desperately at her throat. With the peculiar intense clarity that comes over one at such moments Prestimion saw unceasing streams of blood flowing between her clamped fingers.
An instant later the madman rose up before him, the bloody sickle lifted high. Gialaurys and Akbalik, aware by now of what was taking place, rushed toward him. But someone else reached Prestimion first. A burly young man of impressive size had burst out of the crowd only seconds behind the man with the sickle, and now, acting with startling speed, he caught up with the assassin, seized his right arm by the wrist, and bent it sharply backward. The sickle dropped from his hand, hit the ground with a tinny clatter, and skittered harmlessly away. The young man, crooking his other arm, wrapped it around the madman’s throat and closed it on him with remorseless twisting force.
There was a sharp snapping sound. The madman went limp, his head lolling loosely. The big young man hurled him contemptuously away from him like a discarded doll.
He knelt then beside the wounded girl, whose entire upper body was covered in bright blood. She was no longer moving. A great moan came from the boy as he inspected her frightful wound. For a moment he seemed overwhelmed by shock and grief. Then, tenderly scooping her into his arms, he rose and walked off into the crowd with his burden.
The whole extraordinary event had taken no more than a few seconds. Prestimion felt dazed by it all. He struggled to regain his poise.
Akbalik was standing grim-faced above the fallen and motionless assassin, now, pinning him to the ground with the tip of his sword as if expecting him to rise and begin swinging the sickle again. The other guardsmen arrayed themselves in a close formation in front of the astounded townspeople, cutting the Coronal off from their view. Gialaurys loomed up like a wall in front of Prestimion.
“Lordship?” he cried, wide-eyed with alarm. “Are you safe?”
Prestimion nodded. He was badly shaken, but the sickle had come nowhere near him. Quickly he turned and trotted up the palace steps toward Meglis, who was still standing there, gaping like a drowned habbagog. The royal party hurried inside. Someone brought a bowl of chilled wine, and Prestimion gulped it greedily. The vision of that bloodied girl—struck down before his eyes, dying, perhaps already dead—blazed in his mind. And the lunatic assassin: his wild howls, those crazed eyes, that flashing blade! But for the accident that the girl had happened to be standing right in front of him, Prestimion knew, he would probably be lying dead in the plaza this very moment. Her presence there had saved him, yes, and that of the sturdy young man who had grabbed the assailant’s arm.
How strange, he thought, to be the target of an assassination attempt! Had a Coronal ever died in such a way? Cut down in front of the cheering populace by a man swinging a blade? He doubted it. It went against all reason. The Coronal was the embodiment of the world; to kill him was to shatter a continent, to send all of Alhanroel, say, to the bottom of the sea. Korsibar’s seizing of the throne was something he could almost understand: it was one prince asserting a claim, however invalid it might be, against the rights of another. Not this: this was new. This was madness: an emptiness in someone’s soul driving him to create an emptiness in the world. Prestimion gave thanks to the Divine that it had failed. Not merely for his own sake; that was too obvious to be worth thinking about. But for the world’s. The world could not afford to have the Coronal struck down in the street like some beast in a slaughterhouse.
Prestimion turned to Akbalik. “Find that boy, and bring him here right away. I want to know how the girl is, too.” And, to Gialaurys: “What’s become of the assassin?”