This was farming territory—the soft yellow ground was phenomenally fertile—and the people seemed like simple folk, by and large, unaccustomed not only to visiting Coronals but to aristocrats of any sort. The mayor of Ketheron city appeared almost to be trembling as he came out of the town hall, a spindly, warped three-story tower at the very edge of the cliff, to greet Prestimion and lead him within. He was protected by a formidable armamentarium of superstition: his purple-and-yellow cloak of office was bedecked with so many talismans and amulets that it was a wonder the poor man could stand upright beneath their weight, and he had brought two mages with him for moral support, a plump little oily-skinned man and a tall gaunt scarecrow of a woman, who carried the holy implements of what was apparently a purely local cult, since not even Maundigand-Klimd had ever seen their like before. The Su-Suheris seemed amused by the earnest clodhopping conjurations by which the pair drove lurking dark spirits from the cavernous, musty-smelling room where the meeting was taking place, rendering it safe for the Coronal and his party. Or was it for the mayor’s own benefit that these rites were being performed?
Gialaurys conducted the inquiry, while Prestimion and the rest stood to one side. Clearly the mayor was too thoroughly intimidated by the mere proximity of Prestimion to be able to carry on a conversation with him, and Septach Melayn’s airy insouciance did not seem likely to put the poor man any more at ease. But Gialaurys, massive and fearsome though he looked, had the art of speaking with plain folk, for he came of plain stock himself.
Had the mayor or any of the townsfolk seen or heard aught of Dantirya Sambail in these parts? he asked. No, they had not. The mayor did seem aware, at least, of who Dantirya Sambail was. But he could not imagine why the awesome Procurator of Ni-moya would have been traveling hereabouts. That so mighty and terrifying a personage could have had any reason whatever for entering this picturesque but unimportant region was a concept that left the poor man looking baffled and dismayed.
“We have chosen the wrong route, I think,” Prestimion murmured to Septach Melayn. “If he’d been heading straight for the Aruachosian coast, he’d have had no choice but to pass through here, wouldn’t he? We should have gone west from Bailemoona instead of south.”
“Unless the mayor’s somehow been magicked into forgetting that Dantirya Sambail ever came by,” said Septach Melayn. “The Procurator knows how that game’s played, now.”
But nothing so devious had been necessary. When Gialaurys produced a sketch of Mandralisca that they were carrying with them, the mayor recognized the poison-taster’s bleak face instantly. “Oh, yes, yes,” he said. “He was here. Traveling in a rusty old floater, he was, and stopped in town to buy provisions—three weeks ago, five, six, somewhere back then. Who could ever forget a face like that?”
“Traveling alone, was he?” Gialaurys asked.
The mayor had no idea. No one had taken the trouble to investigate the floater, which had been parked by the bank of the river. The hatchet-faced man had bought what he needed and returned to his floater and continued onward. Nor could the mayor say which way he had gone.
Here, at least, his mages were of some use. “We could see that this stranger would bring no luck to our city,” the gaunt woman volunteered. “And so we followed along his floater’s trail for half a mile or so, and planted dragon-wax candles every hundred yards to ensure that he’d not return.”
“And the direction he was going—?”
“South,” the little oily-faced man said immediately. “Toward Arvyanda.”
10
“They were glad to get rid of us,” Prestimion said, chuckling. The royal caravan was crossing something called Spurifon Bridge, a weatherbeaten, disturbingly creaky wooden span that could well have been five thousand years old. It was just barely possible to see the silt-choked Sulfur River far below them, moving at the sluggish pace of a sleepy serpent, a tawny yellow line against the brighter yellow of the valley through which it flowed. “How terrifying we must have seemed! I hope they didn’t just make up the first story that came into their minds for the sake of moving us on out of town.”
“It takes courage to lie to a Coronal,” Abrigant said. “Was there so much as one atom of courage in that whole town?”
“They told the truth,” said Maundigand-Klimd. “I detect the trail of their incantation-candles along our path. Look: there, and there. Burned to stumps, but there are the stumps. We go the right way.”
“These Ketherons are harmless timid people caught up in matters too deep for them, and we have badly frightened them,” Prestimion said. “We should do something for them.” He looked toward Septach Melayn. “Make a note of it. We’ll build them a new bridge, at least. This one belongs in a museum.”
“It’s the responsibility of the Pontifex to build bridges,” grumbled Septach Melayn. “That’s what the title means: builder of bridges. An ancient word, millions of years old.”
“Nothing’s millions of years old,” said Abrigant. “Not even the stars.”
“Well, thousands, then.”
“Peace, both of you,” Prestimion snapped. “Let the appropriate department be notified, a new bridge for Ketheron, and so be it, with no further quibbling.” What was the use of being Coronal, he wondered, if he had to utter a decree twice, even among his closest associates, in order to make it effective?
South of the river the prevailing yellowness of the countryside soon began to thin out, reversing the pattern of the north, streaks of darker soil becoming more and more common until everything was normal again. It was something of a relief to be leaving it behind. The brilliant color, strange as it was, numbed and deadened the mind after a time by its very intensity, and the monotony of the sulfureous landscape had begun to become oppressive.
They camped that night in the foothills of a mountain range of moderate size that lay just ahead of them. A sending of the Lady of the Isle came to Prestimion as he slept.
It was uncommon for Coronals to receive sendings, and not only because the Lady customarily was his own mother. Sendings were meant as guidance for the soul; and one Power of the Realm ordinarily did not presume to advise another. But sometimes when a Coronal stood at a point of decision and crisis the Lady would take it upon herself to intervene with her wisdom. This night, sleep overcame Prestimion almost as soon as he had closed his eyes. He felt himself going down into the trance state that betokened a sending. Then he heard the soft music of the Lady’s domain, and glided easily into a low pavilion of pure white marble set all about with pots of flowering shrubs, fragrant alabandinas and tanigales and the like. And there before him was the Princess Therissa, Lady of the Isle, his mother and mother to all the world, smiling and holding out her hands to him.
She looked as young as ever, for she was one of those women whom age seemingly could not touch. Her thick dark hair had lost none of its gleam since she had taken up her new duties. The silver headband of her office lay lightly on her brow. On the bosom of her robe, as always, rested the Muldemar Ruby, that wondrous jewel that had been in the family four thousand years, a deep red stone with a purple flush, set in a golden hoop.
Thismet was standing beside her.
Or so it seemed at first to Prestimion. That small, delicately formed woman of the mischievous sparkling eyes could only be Thismet; but even as his spirit reverberated with surprise and unease—for why would Thismet be here with the Lady in this sending, when he thought he had begun to make his final peace with the tragedy of her death, and was moving onward in his life?—everything shifted in the smooth way that things often shift in dreams, and he was plainly able to see that the woman next to his mother was not Thismet at all, had never been Thismet, could not have been Thismet. She was Varaile. How strange, he thought, that he had mistaken her for Thismet. For each was beautiful and compelling in her own way, but tall robust full-bodied Varaile looked nothing at all like the tiny fragile-seeming woman whom Prestimion had loved and lost so long ago.