“The Teotas I knew was not a suicidal man, Prestimion.”
“I agree. But what was he doing out there, then? Sleepwalking? No one sleepwalks like that. Drunk? Teotas was never known as a heavy drinker. Under a spell, perhaps?”
“Perhaps,” Varaile said.
His eyes widened. “You sound almost serious.”
“Why not? Is it such an impossible idea?”
“Let’s assume that it isn’t, then. I’ll grant you that there are some magics that actually work. But who would lay a spell of self-destruction on the Pontifex’s brother, Varaile?”
“Who, indeed?” she replied sharply. “Isn’t that what you need to find out?”
Prestimion nodded absently. The mystery had to be unraveled, yes. But how? How? Who could look into dead Teotas’s mind and produce the needed answers? They were roaming into very mysterious territory now. “I need to discuss all this with Dekkeret,” he said. “Dekkeret was the last person to see Teotas alive, only a few hours before his death. Abrigant says he knows something about what happened.”
“You should speak to him, then. By all means, Prestimion.”
From Abrigant, Prestimion learned that Dekkeret was still at the Castle, but would be traveling down to Muldemar House later that day, now that he knew Prestimion had arrived. And in mid-afternoon came hubbub and hullaballoo from without, as a procession of royal floaters bearing the starburst emblem drew up outside. Prestimion looked out to see the towering figure of the Coronal, in full formal robes, entering the building. He noted with more than a little interest that the Lady Fulkari walked at his side.
Dekkeret seemed grim and determined, and very much in charge of things. It was evident that he had begun already to take on the intangible qualities of kingliness, here in the early months of his reign. Prestimion was pleased by that. He had never had any doubt of the wisdom of his choice of Dekkeret to succeed him, but that look of grandeur that Dekkeret wore now was a welcome confirmation all the same.
There was no chance before dinner for a conference with him, nor during the meal either. Coronals had not been uncommon visitors at Muldemar House over the centuries, and the princes of Muldemar maintained guest quarters for them in the east wing, as far from Prestimion’s present suite as was possible to be. Their first opportunity for a meeting was at the dinner table, but dinner was a somber, formal event at which private conversations were impossible. Prestimion and Dekkeret embraced, as it behooved the Pontifex and Coronal to do whenever they were present at the same event, and then they took their seats at opposite ends of the long table. Fulkari sat beside Dekkeret, Varaile adjacent to Prestimion, with Fiorinda next to her.
The rest of the gathering that was assembled in the great banquet hall was few in number. Abrigant and his wife Cirophan were accompanied by their two adolescent boys. Prestimion’s two older sons were there also. The only other guests were Septach Melayn and Gialaurys, who had come with the Pontifex to Muldemar. Abrigant spoke briefly of the solemn occasion that had brought them together this night, and they lifted their glasses in Teotas’s memory. Then dinner was served, a fine one; but it was an oddly assorted group, the prevailing mood was a subdued one, and there was little conversation.
Afterward Dekkeret came to Prestimion and said, “You and I should talk after dinner, your majesty.”
“We should, yes. Shall I bring Septach Melayn?”
“I think it should just be the two of us,” said Dekkeret. “You can share what I have to say with the High Spokesman later, if you wish. But Abrigant feels that you and I ought to discuss these things just between ourselves at first.”
“Abrigant knows what you’re going to tell me?” Prestimion asked.
“Some. Not all.”
Prestimion chose for the site of their meeting the tasting-room of Muldemar House, a place that had always exerted a strange charm over him, though there were those who said that they found the place gloomy. It lay at the mouth of a deep cool cavern of green basalt on the lowest level of the building, extending far underground into the bedrock of the Mount itself. Along both sides the entire passage was lined from floor to ceiling with a royal ransom in Muldemar wines, vintages stretching over hundreds of years, back through the mists of time. An ancient iron door sealed the room off from the rest of the building. There was no part of Muldemar House where he and Dekkeret could find greater seclusion.
He had requested that Abrigant’s cellarmaster leave a bottle of brandy for them on the tasting-room table. It was amusing to see that the bottle that the man had chosen, a big-bellied hand-blown globelet, was an outrageously precious one with what was surely more than a century of dust on it and a faded label dating it to the reign of Lord Gobryas, predecessor of Prankipin as Coronal. Prestimion poured two generous bowlfuls and they sipped for a time in silence, savoring the brandy reflectively.
At length Dekkeret said, “I feel great sadness at your loss, Prestimion. I loved Teotas greatly. How sorry I am that this wondrous liquor, if I’m ever fortunate enough to taste it again, will always summon the memory of his death for me.”
Prestimion nodded gravely. “I never thought that I’d outlive him. Even though he was aging quickly, and looked so much older than he was, there were many years between us. And then to have something like this happen—this—”
“Yes,” said Dekkeret. “But perhaps he was never meant to live a long life. As you say, he was aging quickly. There was always a fire burning within him. As though he had a furnace inside his breast, and was consuming himself for fuel. That temper of his—his impatience—”
“I have some of those qualities myself, you know,” Prestimion said. “But only a tincture. He had the full dose.” He applied himself thoughtfully to his brandy for a time. Its texture was marvelously smooth, but its long-pent-up flavor erupted within one’s mouth like an exploding galaxy. Then he said, when he judged the silence to have gone on long enough, “He killed himself, didn’t he, Dekkeret? What else could it have been, but suicide? But why? Why? He was under great stress, yes, but what kind of stress is there that could possibly drive a man like Teotas to take his own life?”
Quietly Dekkeret said, “I think he was murdered, Prestimion.”
“Murdered?”
Prestimion could not have been more astounded if Dekkeret had slapped him in the face.
“Or, let us say, he was forced by something outside himself into a frame of mind in which dying seemed more attractive to him than living; and then he was maneuvered into a place where death was a very easy thing to find.”
Prestimion hunched forward, staring intently. Dekkeret’s words went through him like a whirlwind. This was not anything that he wanted to believe. But the world does not let one believe only the things one chooses to believe.
“Go on,” he said. “Let me hear it all.”
“He came to me in my office,” said Dekkeret, “on the last afternoon of his life. As you know, I had invited him to serve as my High Counsellor—that was how much regard I had for him, Prestimion—but he would neither say me yea or nay about taking the post, and finally I sent for him to press him on it.”
“Why was he so hesitant? Was it on Fiorinda’s account?”
“That was the reason he gave, yes. That the Lady Varaile had requested the Lady Fiorinda to be her companion at the Labyrinth, and Teotas would not let his own ambitions stand in the way of that. But also there were the dreams he was having. Every night, apparently, a siege of nightmares beyond all describing.”
“Yes. Varaile heard about that from Fiorinda.—There are a lot of bad dreams going around these days, you know. My own daughter Tuanelys has been troubled by them. And Varaile as well, lately.”