But the Coronal and his consort did not care to entertain anyone, just now, except each other. There would be time later to carouse with Septach Melayn, to listen to old Serithorn’s tales of the court gossip of long ago, to play host to great princes and dukes. This was a time purely for themselves. They had much still to learn about each other, and this was the finest opportunity they would ever have. Prestimion and Varaile spent their three days moving from room to room, from level to level, examining the curious artifacts with which the place was filled, taking in the glorious views of the gleaming airy city outside, paddling up and down the pool, and, much of the time, exchanging thoughts, memories, ideas, caresses. Meals were brought to them by silent servants whenever they remembered to request them.
On the third day, with the greatest regret, they came forth from their retreat. A royal floater waited outside the building to return them to the Castle; and thousands of people of every rank and station, those who had come to High Morpin on holiday and those whose role it was to serve their needs, sent up a great cry: “Prestimion! Varaile! Prestimion! Varaile! Long live Prestimion and Varaile!”
But then it was back to work. For Prestimion, the million minutiae of government; for Varaile, the weighty task of taking command of the royal household.
It was a busy time. Prestimion had had ample opportunity in recent years, sitting as he had at Lord Confalume’s right hand, to see how much work it was to be Coronal. But somehow the reality of it had never sunk in. Confalume, that robust and hearty man, had made it all look easy. To Confalume, the endless routine responsibilities of the throne had always been nothing but mere buzzing interruptions of the real work, which was to express the grandeur of the realm and its monarch by a glorious construction program: fountains, plazas, monuments, palaces, highways, parks, harbors. The lavishly conceived Confalume Throne and the awesome throne-room in which it was set would symbolize the reign of Lord Confalume for centuries to come. Even when he had been Coronal for forty years, and had largely withdrawn from active rule into a private world of mages and incantations, he still managed to keep up an outward show of gusto and vitality. Only those closest to him had any inkling of how weary he actually was toward the end, how relieved he was that the aged Pontifex Prankipin had died and allowed him at last to move on to the quieter life of the Labyrinth.
Prestimion was hardly lacking in vitality himself. But his was of a kind different from Confalume’s. Confalume expended his energy in a steady calm radiant outpouring, like the sun itself. Prestimion, a more volatile man, taut and tense within, functioned by bursts of impulsive action, tempered by long periods devoted to the accumulating of strength. That was how he had handled the insurrection of Korsibar: a lengthy period of waitful calculation and planning, and then the sudden launching of the counterstrike that had swept the usurper away.
But you could not reign as Coronal that way. You sat here atop the world, most literally, and the needs and hopes and fears and problems of the fifteen billion people of Majipoor found their way up the slopes of Castle Mount to you day after day after day. And although you delegated as much of the work as you could to others, the ultimate responsibility for every decision was always yours. Everything flowed through you. You were the world incarnate; you were Majipoor, in and of yourself.
Had Korsibar realized that, when he foolishly decided to make himself Coronal? Had he thought that being king was an unending round of tournaments and feasts, and nothing more? Very likely he had, that shallow man.
Prestimion could never have allowed himself to stand to one side and let Korsibar keep the throne: it was as much a matter of his sense of obligation to the world as it was his own desire to be Coronal himself.
And so, when he might have had peace with Korsibar and a place for himself on the Council for the price of a starburst gesture and an oath of allegiance, Prestimion had not been able to do it, and Korsibar had thrown him into the Sangamor tunnels as a traitor, and the war between them had begun. Now Korsibar was forgotten and Prestimion was Coronal Lord of Majipoor; and here he was, plodding through a daily stack of petitions and resolutions and memoranda and acts of the Council so thick it would choke a gabroon. It was enough to make him nostalgic, almost, for the days of the civil war, when he was far from all this paperwork, living a life of pure action.
Not that everything that crossed his desk was stultifyingly routine, of course.
There was the madness plague, for one. Gibbering vacant-eyed victims roamed the streets of a thousand cities, most of them harmless, some not. Hospitals everywhere were filling with screaming lunatics. There were accidents, collisions, fires, even murders. What was causing it? Prestimion feared that he knew, but it was not something he could speak of to anyone. Nor could he see a solution. The constant reports of chaos out there weighed heavily on his spirit. But there was nothing he could do.
Nothing he could do, either, about the dangers posed by his distant cousin Dantirya Sambaiclass="underline" the great adversary, the ever diabolical foe, malevolent and unpredictable, still at large. Where was he? What was he up to? All these months, and no one had seen or heard from him.
It was easy and tempting to think that he had perished, that he and his demonic man Mandralisca lay dead and rotting in some roadside ditch in southern Alhanroel. But that was too easy; and it strained Prestimion’s imagination to believe that fate could so conveniently have removed Dantirya Sambail from his list of problems without the slightest effort on his part. Still, a network of spies on two continents had produced no information.
The Procurator should surely have reached his headquarters in Ni-moya by now, but his throne there sat empty. Nor had he surfaced anywhere in southern or western Alhanroel. It was all very unsettling. Dantirya Sambail would reappear when least expected, Prestimion knew, and would cause maximum trouble when he did. But here, again, all that he could do was wait, and do his daily work, and wait. And wait.
Maundigand-Klimd came to him and said, “Look at these, my lord.” The Su-Suheris magus had a cloth sack with him, bulging as though he had brought three pounds of ripe calimbots straight from the marketplace.
It was Threeday morning, the day of the week when Prestimion customarily went down to the exercise-hall to engage in a little singlesticks contest with Septach Melayn. That was always an unequal match, for Septach Melayn had the reach on him by eight or ten inches, and had unparalleled mastery of any kind of hand-wielded weapon besides. But it was essential for the two men, bound now as they were to their desks so much of the time, to work at keeping their bodies in tune; and so on Threedays they dueled with batons, and on Fivedays they tested each other on the archery course, where the advantage lay with Prestimion.
“What do you have here, and is it necessary for me to see it at just this moment?” Prestimion asked, in some impatience. “I have an appointment with the High Counsellor.”
“It will take only a minute or two, my lord.”
Maundigand-Klimd up-ended his bag and what looked like three dozen tiny severed heads fell out onto Prestimion’s desk.
They were ceramic, he realized, after the first startled glance. But modeled in an extremely vivid and realistic manner, with terrifying grimacing faces—mouths gaping wide, eyes staring wildly, nostrils flaring—and a convincing swath of gore at the neck-stumps: cunning simulations of people who had died in the most frightful agony.
“Very pretty,” Prestimion said bleakly. “I’ve never seen anything like them. Is this the latest fashion of jewelry among the ladies of the court, Maundigand-Klimd?”