She said, “Don’t worry, Prestimion. The effects will pass in another moment or two.”
“I fainted, didn’t I?”
“You lost consciousness. You didn’t actually fall, though.”
“Here. Take this back,” he said, reaching for the silver circlet. But it was already gone from his forehead. He shuddered. “What a nightmare it was, mother!”
“Yes. A nightmare. I see these things every day. I have for months, now. So have the people of my staff. This is what the world has become, Prestimion.”
“All of it?”
She smiled. “Not all, no, not yet. Much is still healthy. What you felt was the pain of those who were most vulnerable to the plague, the first victims, the ones who had no way of defending themselves against the attack that came in the night. Their cries are the ones that rise to find me as I move through the night above them. What dreams can I send, do you think, that can heal such pain as that?”
He was silent. He had no answer to that. He had never, so it seemed to him then, felt such despair in his life: not even in the moment when Korsibar had seized the crown that he and everyone else had expected to go to him.
I have destroyed the world, he thought.
Looking toward Varaile, he said, “Do you have any idea of what I was experiencing when I was wearing that thing?”
“Some. It must have been very bad. The look on your face—that stunned, terrible expression—”
“Your father is one of the lucky ones,” he said. “He isn’t able to comprehend what’s happened to him. At least I hope he can’t.”
“You were looking right into people’s minds?”
“Not into individual ones, no. At least, it didn’t seem that way. It isn’t possible, I think, to see into individual minds. What you get is general impressions, broad waves of sensation, the aggregate of what must be hundreds of minds all at once.”
“Thousands,” the Lady said.
She was studying him very closely, he realized, from her place across the room. Her gaze was warm and compassionate and motherly, but it was a penetrating one, also, cutting deep into the interior of his soul.
After a while she said, very quietly, “Tell me what has occurred, Prestimion, that has brought this thing about.”
She knows, he thought.
There can be no doubt of that. She knows. Not the details, but the essence. That I am somehow responsible, that some action of mine is at the bottom of all this.
And she was waiting now to learn the rest of it. It was clear to him that he could hide it from her no longer. She wanted a confession from him; and he was willing, now—eager, even—to pour it all forth.
What about Varaile, though? He cast an uncertain glance toward her. Should he ask her to leave? Could he say what he had to say in front of her, and thus make her a party to his own immense crime? I am the one responsible, he would have to say, for what has happened to your father, Varaile. Did he dare tell her that?
Yes, he thought.
Yes, I do. She is my wife. I will have no secrets from her, king of the world though I be.
Slowly, carefully, Prestimion said, “It is all my doing, mother. I think you already know that, but I admit it all the same: I am the cause of the catastrophe, I alone. It was never my intention to make such a thing happen, but I did, and the guilt is entirely mine.”
He heard Varaile inhale sharply in astonishment and bewilderment. His mother, watching him as calmly and keenly as before, said nothing. She was waiting for the rest.
“I will explain it from the beginning,” he said.
The Lady, still silent, nodded.
Prestimion closed his eyes a moment, steadying himself. Begin at the beginning, yes. But where was the beginning?
The obliteration first, the reasons for it afterward, he thought. Yes.
He took a deep breath and plunged in. “The course of recent world events that you think you know is not the one that the world actually followed,” he said. “A vast deception has taken place. Great things have happened, things unprecedented in the history of the world, and no one knows of them. Thousands have died, and the reasons for their deaths have been concealed. The truth has been blotted out and we have all been living a lie, and only a handful of people are aware of the real story—Septach Melayn, Gialaurys, Abrigant, two or three others. None besides those. I offer it now to you; but you will see, I hope, that it must not go beyond you.”
He paused. Looked toward his mother, and then to Varaile. They still did not speak. Their expressions were unreadable, remote. They were waiting to hear what he had to say.
“You, mother: you had four sons, and one is dead, Taradath, who was so very clever, a poet, one who loved to play games with words. You think he died while swimming in one of the rivers of the north-country. Not so: he died by drowning, yes, but it was in the course of a terrible battle along the River Iyann, when the Mavestoi Dam broke. Does that startle you? It is the truth: that is how Taradath died. But you have believed a lie all this time, and I am responsible for that.”
Her only reaction was the merest flicker of the corner of her mouth. Her self-control astounded him. Varaile simply looked mystified.
“To continue: Lord Confalume had two children also. Twins, a son and a daughter. I see you look surprised at that. Yes, the children of Confalume are unknown today, and I am accountable also for that. The daughter’s name was Thismet: she was small, delicate, very beautiful, an extremely complex woman full of great ambition. She took after her mother Roxivail, I think. As for the son, he was strong and handsome, a tall, dark-haired man of lordly bearing, an athlete, a skilled hunter. Not particularly intelligent, I must say. A simple soul, but good-hearted, in his fashion. His name was Korsibar.”
From Varaile came a little cry of surprise as he spoke that name. Prestimion was puzzled by her reaction; but he chose not to interrupt the flow of his story to ask for an explanation. The Lady Therissa seemed far away, lost in thought.
“The Pontifex Prankipin grew ill,” Prestimion said. “Lord Confalume, contemplating the imminent change of Powers, fastened upon me as the one to follow him as Coronal. He said nothing publicly about that, of course, while Prankipin still lived. We gathered at the Labyrinth, all the lords and princes of the realm, to await the Pontifex’s death. And in that time of waiting certain villainous folk came to Prince Korsibar and whispered in his ear: ‘You are the Coronal’s son, and you are a great princely man. Why should little Prestimion be Coronal when your father becomes Pontifex? Take the throne for yourself, Korsibar! Take it! Take it!’ Two scoundrelly brothers, Farholt and Farquanor, were among those who urged him most strongly in that: they are forgotten now too, and good riddance. Another conspirator was a Su-Suheris magus, chilly and evil. And there was also the Lady Thismet, the most powerful influence of all. They pushed, and Korsibar was too weak and simple to resist. He had never imagined himself as Coronal. But now they made him think that the throne was his due. The old Pontifex died; and we gathered in the Court of Thrones for the passing of the crown, and Korsibar’s magus cast a spell to cloud our minds, and when we were ourselves again we saw Korsibar sitting beside his father on the double throne, and the star-burst crown was on Korsibar’s head and Confalume, who had had a spell of acquiescence placed upon him, took no steps to halt his son’s seizure of power.”
“This is not easy to believe,” said the Lady Therissa.