“Dead, lordship.”
“Damnation! I didn’t want him killed, Gialaurys. He should have been held for questioning.”
Akbalik, who had reached the palace door, paused and turned. “Nothing could be done, my lord. His neck had been broken. I was standing over a corpse.”
“Let’s get some information about who he was, at any rate. Just a solitary lunatic? Or do we have a conspiracy here, I wonder?”
Meglis now came bumbling up, muttering imbecilic apologies, inarticulately craving the Coronal’s pardon for this unfortunate incident. He was an altogether contemptible person, Prestimion decided. Another hard consequence of Korsibar’s terrible folly: the flower of Majipoor’s aristocracy had perished in the war, and all too many of the great titles were in the hands of fools or boys.
In late afternoon Akbalik returned to the palace. The young man who had saved Prestimion’s life was with him.
“This is Dekkeret,” Akbalik said. “The girl was his cousin.”
“Was?”
“She died within moments, my lord,” said the boy. His voice quavered just a little. He was very pale, and could barely meet Prestimion’s gaze. The overpowering grief he felt was obvious; but he appeared to have it under tight control. “It is the most terrible loss. She was my best friend. And talked for weeks of nothing else but your visit, and how badly she wanted to have a glimpse of you at close range when you were here. And for you to have a glimpse of her, my lord. I think she was in love with you.”
“I think so too,” Prestimion said. He gave the boy a long, careful look. He seemed very impressive. Prestimion had learned long ago that there are some people whose qualities are instantly apparent, and that was the way with this Dek-keret: no doubt but that he was intelligent, sensitive, strong within and without. And, perhaps, ambitious. The boy was behaving very well, too, under the impact of his lovely cousin’s awful death.
An idea began suddenly to form in him. “How old are you, Dekkeret?”
“Eighteen last Fourday, sir.”
“Are you in school?”
“Two more months, my lord.”
“And then?”
“I haven’t decided, sir. Governmental service, possibly. At the Castle, if I can manage it, or else some post with the Pontificate. My father’s a salesman, who goes from city to city, but that has no appeal to me.” And then, as if speaking of himself were of no interest to him:—"The man who killed my cousin? What is going to happen to him, my lord?”
“He’s dead, Dekkeret. You pulled his neck back a little too far, I’m afraid.”
“Ah. I don’t always know my own strength, sir. Is it a bad thing that I killed him, lordship?”
“In fact I would have preferred to have had the opportunity of asking him a question or two about why he felt the way he apparently did about me. But in the heat of the moment you could hardly have been expected to handle him with any special delicacy. And it was good that you moved as quickly as you did.—Are you serious about a career at the Castle, boy?”
Color rose to Dekkeret’s cheeks. “Oh, my lord! Yes, my lord! Yes. Yes. There’s nothing I would want more in life than that!”
“If only everything could be arranged so easily as this can,” Prestimion said, with a genial smile. He glanced toward Akbalik. “When we head back to the Castle, he comes with us. Enroll him as a knight-initiate and see that he’s given accelerated training. Take him under your wing. I put you in charge of him, Akbalik. Set him on his way.”
“I’ll look after him well, my lord.”
“Do that. Who knows? We may have found the next Coronal here today, eh? Stranger things have happened.”
Dekkeret’s face was a fiery red and he was blinking rapidly, as though this astonishing fulfillment of his wildest fantasies had brought him to the edge of tears and he was struggling to fight them back. But then he regained his poise. With great dignity he dropped to his knees before Prestimion and made a solemn starburst, and offered his thanks in a low, unsteady voice.
Prestimion gently told him to stand. “You’ll do well among us, I know.—And I’m deeply sorry about your cousin. I could tell, just in those few moments of speaking with her, what a wonderful girl she must have been. Her death will haunt me for a long time to come.” Those were no empty words. The ghastly purposeless murder of that beautiful child had stirred grim memories in him. Rising, he said to Gialaurys, “Send word to Meglis that the banquet for tonight is canceled, if he hasn’t managed to figure that out himself. Have a light dinner brought to me in my quarters. I don’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone, is that clear? In the morning we’ll set out for the Castle.”
The Coronal spent a dark, brooding evening alone. The sight of that flashing sickle, those spurting gouts of blood, would not leave him. The girl’s gentle face, wide-eyed with adoration and fear, kept blurring into a swirling mist before him and transforming itself into Thismet’s very different features. Again and again his tormented mind conjured up for him the grim scene that had come bursting into his mind so many times before, the bloody field of Beldak marsh in the final moments of the battle of Thegomar Edge, the sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon rearing up before Thismet with the dagger in his hand—
He dared not sleep, knowing what dreams were likely to come. A few books were in his baggage. He chose one at random and sat up reading far into the night. The Heights of Castle Mount, it was, that creaky old epic of the long-ago past, rich with tales of valiant Coronals riding forth into remote and perilous corners of the planet. Gladly he lost himself in its pages. Had any of them really existed, those ancient glorious heroes, or were they only names out of fantasy? And would someone, someday, write a poem about him, the tragic and heroic Lord Prestimion, who had loved and lost his enemy’s sister, and then—A knock at the door. This late?
“Who’s there? What is it?” Prestimion said, not troubling to conceal his annoyance. “Gialaurys, my lord.”
“I wanted no company tonight.”
“I know that, Prestimion. But there’s an urgent message from Septach Melayn at the Castle. For your eyes alone, immediate response required. I couldn’t let it wait until morning.”
Prestimion sighed. “Very well.” He flung his book aside and went to the door.
The letter bore Prestimion’s own seal. Septach Melayn had sent it in his capacity as regent, then. Urgent indeed: connected, perhaps, to this afternoon’s attempt on his life? Hastily he cracked the blob of red wax and unfolded the letter.
“No,” he said, after scanning it a moment. A drumbeat pounding started at his temples. He closed his eyes. “By all the demons of Triggoin, no!”
“My lord?”
“Here. Read it yourself.”
The message was a brief one. Even Gialaurys, carefully tracing out the words with his fingertip, speaking them silently aloud as he moved along the line, needed only an instant or two to absorb its import.
He looked up. His stolid face was gray with shock.
“Dantirya Sambail has escaped from the Castle? And Mandralisca too? Heading for Zimroel, so it says here, to set up a government in opposition to yours. But this is impossible, my lord! How can it be?—Do you think this is Septach Melayn’s idea of a joke, Prestimion?”
Prestimion managed a somber smile. “Not even his notion of wit could stretch as far as this, Gialaurys.”
“Dantirya Sambail!” Gialaurys cried, prowling restlessly now about the room. “Always Dantirya Sambail!—There’s been some treason here, my lord. If only we’d put him to death without hesitation, right there on the battlefield, this would never have—”
“If only, yes. If only. That is not a useful thought, Gialaurys.” Prestimion took back the letter and stared numbly at it, reading it again and again as though he expected to find its message changing after a time into something less horrific.