“Believe it, mother. Oh, I urge you, believe it. It happened.”
Speaking rapidly now, Prestimion sketched an account of the civil war for them. Korsibar’s proclamation of power and his own refusal to accept the takeover. The new Coronal’s naive invitation to Prestimion to take a seat on the Council, which was also refused, and with such anger and contempt that Korsibar had had him arrested and chained up in the Sangamor tunnels. His release from the tunnels through a compromise engineered by the tricky Dantirya Sambail, who hoped to play Korsibar and Prestimion off against each other to his own advantage; his raising of an army to challenge the illegal ascent of Korsibar to the throne; the first battle, outside the foothill city of Arkilon, which ended in a defeat for Prestimion’s rebel forces at the hands of Korsibar’s general Navigorn; the retreat into central Alhanroel, and a great victory for Prestimion over Navigorn at the Jhelum River; other battles, victories and defeats, his long march northwestward across Alhanroel with the armies of Korsibar in steady pursuit. And then the great disaster in the valley of the Iyann, when Dantirya Sam-bail, who now had allied himself with Korsibar, persuaded the usurper to blow up the Mavestoi Dam and bring the entire reservoir down on Prestimion’s forces.
“That was when Taradath died, mother, and many another loyal comrade with him, and all the valley was flooded. I was swept away by the waters myself, but managed somehow to swim to safety, and made my way northward into the Valmambra Desert, alone, and nearly died. Septach Melayn and Gialaurys found me there, and Duke Svor, whom you may remember; and the four of us went on to Triggoin, where we spent some months in hiding among the sorcerers, and I learned a few of their skills.” Prestimion smiled an oblique smile. “My tutor was Gominik Halvor. That was the beginning of my alliance with him and with his son Heszmon Gorse.”
Again Prestimion paused. His mother looked very pale. She was plainly much shaken by all this, and struggling hard to encompass it with her mind. Varaile did not even appear to be trying. Most of these names and places were unfamiliar to her; the tale was incomprehensible; she seemed utterly lost.
He moved on now to the climax of his story. He told of how in Triggoin he had come close to despair, but had undertaken a visionary quest in which he had seen that it was his destiny to overthrow Korsibar and heal the world. He described his coming-forth from Triggoin, his gathering of a new army at Gloyn in west-central Alhanroel, his march eastward toward Castle Mount, culminating in the great final battle against Korsibar and his forces at Thegomar Edge.
Prestimion said nothing of Thismet’s decision to change sides; nor of her coming before him in his camp at Gloyn and offering herself to him as his wife—and his consort, once he had attained the throne. He had sworn to have no secrets from Varaile; but here, now, as the episode of his love for Thismet and hers for him reached its proper place in the narrative, he could not bring himself to tell of it. What purpose would be served? It was something that had happened and then had been unhappened, and it had no bearing now on anything pertaining to the present condition of the world: a purely private interlude, buried now in unhistory. Let it remain there, Prestimion thought. The only thing that was important just now was to render an unvarnished account of the events at Thegomar Edge.
“They had the high position,” Prestimion said. “We were down below, in a marshy place called Beldak. At first the battle went against us; but as we retreated, Korsibar’s infantry foolishly came down the hill to give us chase, and once they broke their formation, we were able to bring reinforcements in from the side and catch them between two fronts. The tide turned in our favor. It was then that I deployed the mages who were my ultimate weapon.”
“Mages, Prestimion?” said the Lady Therissa. “You?”
“The fate of the world was at stake, mother. I was resolved to use any force I could to bring Korsibar’s reign to an end. Gominik Halvor and his son came forth, and a dozen more of the high wizards of Triggoin with them, and they cast a spell that turned bright noon into moonless night, and in the darkness we destroyed the usurper’s army. Korsibar was killed by his own magus, the Su-Suheris Sanibak-Thastimoon. The magus slew the Lady Thismet also, and then lost his life to Septach Melayn. Dantirya Sambail, who had fought against us that day, found me in the confusion and offered to fight me for the throne; but I defeated him and had him put under arrest. Then Navigorn came to me to surrender, and the war was over. The good Earl Kamba, who taught me the art of the bow, died that day, and Kanteverel of Bailemoona, and my dear little sly Duke Svor, and many another great lord, but the war was over, and I was Coronal at last.”
He looked toward his mother. The full impact of the story had reached her now. She was stunned into silence.
Then she said, gathering herself a little, “This truly happened, Prestimion? It seems more like some fantastic tale out of some ancient epic poem. The Book of Changes, it could be.”
“This truly happened,” he said. “All of it.”
“If that is so, then why is it that we know nothing of it?”
“Because,” he said, “I stole it from your minds.” And told them then the last of the story: how he stood amidst the dead at Thegomar Edge feeling no joy for his victory, but only grief at the sundering of the world, the irreparable division into two irreconcilable factions. For how could those who had fought for Korsibar, and seen their comrades die for him, accept the rule of Prestimion now? And how could he forgive those who had turned against him, often treacherously, as Prince Serithorn had, and Duke Oljebbin, and Admiral Gonivaul, and Dantirya Sambail, after pledging their support? What, also, of the surviving kin of those who had perished in those bloody battles? Would they not hold grudges against the victorious faction forever? “The war,” Prestimion said, “had left a scar upon the world. No, worse: a wound that could never heal. But suddenly I saw a way of repairing the irreparable, of healing the unhealable.”
And so the summoning one last time of Gominik Halvor and his fellow mages, and the giving of the order for the tremendous incantation that would wipe the war from the world’s history. Korsibar, and his sister also, would never have been; those who had died as a result of Korsibar’s usurpation would be shown to have died in some way other than on the field of battle; no one would remember that there ever had been a war, not even the sorcerers who had brought about its obliteration from memory—no one but Prestimion himself, and Gialaurys, and Septach Melayn. And Lord Prestimion would have succeeded to the starburst crown immediately upon the end of Prankipin’s reign, with no Lord Korsibar intervening.
“There you have it all,” Prestimion said. He was trembling again, and his brow was hot as if with fever. “I thought I was healing the world. Instead I was destroying it. I opened the gateway for this madness that consumes it now, the full dimensions of which have only become apparent to me today.”
Varaile said, speaking for the first time in a long while, “You? But—how, Prestimion? How?”
“Do you know how it is, Varaile, when the hot sun beats down and warms the air, so that it rises, as warm air will, and creates a vacant zone behind it? Turbulent cool winds come rushing in to fill that void. Well, I created such a void in the minds of billions of people. I lifted a great slice of reality from their recollection and gave them nothing to replace it. And, sooner or later, turbulent winds came rushing in. Not to everyone, no, but to many. And the process is not done working yet.”
“My father—” she said softly.
“Your father, yes. And all too many others. The guilt for all that is mine. I meant only to heal, but—but—”