And so—and so—
“You ask me to accept this criminal act of insurrection in good faith, then, and bow down to Korsibar and accept him as king?”
“I have no other path, Prestimion.”
“I was to have been Coronal, not Korsibar.”
“The appointment was never formally made.”
“Do you deny that you intended it?”
“No—no.” Confalume could not meet Prestiinion’s hot gaze. “You would have been Coronal.”
“But instead Korsibar is.”
“Yes. Yes. Korsibar. You were the better choice, Prestimion. But what can I do? My blessings go with you, boy. And nothing more. The thing is done. Korsibar holds the power now.”
Gialaurys said in a throbbing access of fury, when they were gathered soon afterward in Prestimion’s suite, “And are you going to let them put such shame and mockery on you, Prestimion? Is this actually to be borne? If you hadn’t stopped me, I’d have struck him down right where he sat on the Coronal’s seat in the Court of Thrones. And torn the crown from his head and placed it on your own.”
“Three of us, unarmed, and how many of them?” Prestimion asked wearily.
“Tell me again what the new Pontifex plans to do about all this,” Svor said.
“He plans to do nothing. He’s going to hole himself up here in the Labyrinth and let Korsibar have his way.”
“Was he privy to the conspiracy, do you think?” asked Septach Melayn.
“No,” said Prestimion, with a vigorous shake of his head. “Beyond all doubt, Confalume knew nothing at all. It was as much of a surprise to him as it was to you or me. And it has been the complete destruction of him. Look upon his face, if you will: he’s a broken man. I saw only the ruins of Confalume in there.”
“Nevertheless, he holds the highest authority in the land. We must maneuver him toward our side,” Septach Melayn said, laying his hand lightly on Prestimion’s arm. “This is an unsupportable outrage! We dare not allow it to stand!” His cool blue eyes suddenly became hard and fierce with anger, and two fiery patches of color, standing out like beacons against his fair skin, emerged along the sharp ridges of his cheekbones, and that look of amused contemptuous disdain that was Septach Melayn’s usual expression gave way to one of barely contained rage. “We will go to him, you and I, Prestimion, and thrust our faces into his, and make it utterly clear to him that he must immediately—”
“No, my friend,” said Prestimion. “No. Don’t talk to me of thrusting my face into that of a Pontifex and telling him what he must or must not do. That’s blasphemous talk. And in any case it would be useless.”
“So Korsibar will be Coronal?” Septach Melayn said, throwing up his hands.
“And we go politely down on our knees before him?” Gialaurys asked. “With a ‘Yes, Lord Korsibar,’ and a ‘No, Lord Korsibar,’ and a ‘May I lick your boots, Lord Korsibar?’” He clapped his hands together with a sound that could have summoned the dead. “No! I will not abide it, Prestimion!”
“And what will you do, then?”
“Why—Why—”
Gialaurys sputtered into puzzled silence. Then he looked up, eyes brightening. “I’ll challenge him to a wrestling match! Yes! That’s it! Man-to-man, with the throne of Majipoor as the stake! Three falls, and Oljebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul as the referees, and—”
“Yes,” said Svor wryly. “That certainly is the solution.”
“Do you have a better one?” demanded Gialaurys of the little man.
“To leave the Labyrinth as fast as we can, as a first step.”
“You were ever a coward, Svor.”
Svor smiled a bleak smile. “Careful, friend. There’s a considerable difference between cowardice and prudence. But how would you know, having neither of those qualities? It will occur to Korsibar, sooner or later, that he would do well to be rid of us, for Prestimion here is a great impediment to his clear title to the throne. And what better place for achieving our disappearance than this dark and mysterious Labyrinth, where all is levels upon levels that no one understands, and if we were to be taken during the night and led away somewhere into the warrens behind the Hall of Winds to have our throats slit, let’s say, or quietly pushed face down into the black lake of the Court of Columns, it would be a very long time before our bodies were found.”
“And you think Korsibar would countenance any such damnable thing?” Prestimion asked. “By the Divine, Svor, you have a black view of the human soul, don’t you?”
“I have traveled some, and seen a few things.”
“And so you believe that Korsibar has the capacity for murder in him.”
“Despite his shameless taking of the crown, Korsibar may indeed in other matters be as honorable as you would like to think he is,” Svor said coolly. “But there are those in his party who are not. I speak particularly of Count Farquanor. And I remind you also of the Su-Suheris wizard who casts the prince’s spells for him. His handsome sister, I think, has a sinister influence over him as well. Korsibar seems wondrous strong and majestic to look upon, but we know that there’s a certain lightness within him, and it takes but a gentle breeze to move him easily from one place to another. The same folk who pushed him into seizing the throne can push him into taking our lives.”
Prestimion nodded. “Perhaps so,” he said, looking darkly downward. His hands opened and closed on air. “You warned me of all this, Svor, and I told you to hold your tongue, that time when you came to me with that dream of dead Prankipin’s taking the crown from Confalume and putting it on Korsibar’s head. I spurned and ignored you then, to my great cost. You have greater credit with me now. So be it we are in danger here, I agree.” To the other two he said, “I stand with Duke Svor on this. We’ll leave here as soon as is seemly, the moment the old Pontifex is buried.”
“Where would you suggest we go?” asked Septach Melayn, addressing Svor.
“We have homes at Castle Mount. I would go there,” said Svor, “and test the strength and depth of Korsibar’s support within the Castle, and subtly forge such alliances as we can, with this high lord and that one. All the while making great pretense of accepting what has happened, and, yes, freely bending the knee to Korsibar whenever it’s required of us.”
“And the risk of our being murdered in the night?” Septach Melayn asked.
“There’d be little chance of that at the Castle. That’s something that might more easily happen in the Labyrinth than there, where the sun shines brightly on all deeds and we’d have so many more of our friends about us. And as time goes along, perhaps we will find the opportunity—”
“As time goes along!” Gialaurys cried. “Time! Time! Time! How long do you think we could contain ourselves, under those conditions? What life would there be for us, with Korsibar lording it over us day after day and month after month? You may bend your knees to him if you wish, Svor, but mine are of stiffer stuff! No, let me go to him now, and smash him down where he stands, even if they kill me on the spot. Majipoor will get its proper Coronal then.”
“Gently,” Prestimion told him. “Pay attention to Svor’s advice.”
“Perhaps in due time once we are in residence again at the Castle we will find the opportunity,” Svor went on, just as smoothly as though he had not been interrupted at all, “to put together a sufficiency of backers, and then to overthrow Korsibar of a sudden by some quick unexpected stroke. Taking him by surprise at a time when he has come to think of us as loyal subjects, even as he surprised us all this day.”
“Aha!” cried Septach Melayn with a grin. “How dependable you are, Svor! We can always count on you to fall back eventually on the treachery that’s so dear to your heart.”
“Well, then,” said Svor, still unperturbed, “if what I suggest seems despicable to you, let us then be decent law-abiding men, and grovel eagerly before Lord Korsibar every day of our lives and trust to his mercy that he’ll allow us to live yet one day more, and one after that. Or, contrariwise, l
et’s have the bold and mighty Gialaurys go to him this very day, whether on the suicidal mission he has just proposed or else, as he offered before, to challenge him to wrestle for the throne.”
Septach Melayn said, “Ah, you misunderstand me greatly, Svor. You have my full agreement here: my vote is for treachery also, the blacker the better. We leave the Labyrinth with all dispatch; we take up our comfortable lives once more at Castle Mount we wait for our moment, and then we strike. What do you say to all this, Prestimion?”
“We will leave here, yes,” said Prestimion, who in the past few moments had wandered into some private realm of thought, where all this making and unmaking of kings meant nothing to him, and he had attained a happy, quiet, fruitful life as prince and husband perhaps, and as a father someday, amidst the serenity of his estate in Muldemar. “We’ll go quickly, before our lives can be placed in jeopardy, if it’s not already too late for that. And as we journey toward the Castle we’ll endeavor to read the will of the people who live along our route, and see whether there’s any way we can regain the high place that was meant for us to occupy.”
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his tunic and looked from one to the other of them to see whether they were in agreement. And murmured, “Hoy, what’s this?” as the fingers of his right hand closed on something small and smooth and unfamiliar in his pocket. He drew it out. It was the little amulet of polished green stone that the Vroon sorcerer Thalnap Zelifor had given him that day which now seemed so long ago, just before the commencement of the games, when he had paid a call on Prestimion to warn him of impending calamity. “I forget how this thing is called. A magic-thing, it is. A gift from Thalnap Zelifor.”
“A coryrnbor,” Svor said. “They’re said to be useful in time of trouble.”
“Yes. Yes, I remember now. Put it on a chain, the Vroon said. Wear it about my throat, stroke it with my finger when I was in need and it would give me aid.” Somberly Prestimion shook his head. “Thalnap Zelifor! There was another one that saw trouble coming, and I paid him no heed. All these visions! All this wizardry! And I paid no heed.”
“Blood on the moon, that was what he saw,” said Gialaurys. “Do you remember? Omens of war. A secret enemy who would reveal himself and strive against you for the Castle. I said it was Korsibar who was that secret enemy do you remember, Prestimion? I said it the moment that the Vroon left us.”
“And I paid no heed to you either,” Prestimion said. “How blind I was! And how clear it all seems to me now, in hindsight. But hindsight is ever clearer than the other kind, is it not so?” He rested the sleek amulet in the palm of his hand a moment and lightly touched the tip of his finger to the row of minuscule runes inscribed on its face. Then he flipped it through the air to Septach Melayn, who deftly caught it. “You have a good many fine golden chains in your collection of baubles, eh, my lord Septach Melayn? Let me have one for this corymbor, I pray. I’ll wear this thing next to my breast from now on, even as Thalnap Zelifor advised. Who knows? There may be virtue in those tiny lines of sorcery it bears. And surely I need all the help I can get now. We can have no doubt of that.” Prestimion laughed. “Come: let’s make ourselves ready to depart from the Labyrinth. And none too soon will it be.”
3
THE WAY OUT of the Labyrinth began with the lengthy and circuitous journey upward through the underground city’s many levels. There was indeed a special direct route to the surface that took just a short while to traverse, but that route was reserved entirely for Powers of the Realm; and Prestimion, though he had had high expectations once of leaving the Labyrinth as one of those Powers, was nevertheless still nothing more than one of the many princes of the Castle peerage as he set out now for home.
So for Prestimion and his three companions, and all their comrades and aides and baggage-handlers that had come down with them from the Castle, it was up and up and up the long way—level upon level, ring upon ring, a plodding interminable trek requiring many hours even by floater as they ascended the narrow spiraling roads out of the imperial sector where they had all been lodging these many weeks, and onward through all the strange and musty and darkly lit zones of the famous Labyrinth landmarks. The Court of Globes and the House of Records, where the names of all the Coronals and Pontifexes of Majipoor’s thirteen thousand years of recorded history were displayed on a great glowing screen, the Place of Masks, the Court of Pyramids, the Hall of Winds, the Pool of Dreams. And upward still, into the densely populated sectors of the city where the common people lived, that multitude of pale and drably clad folk who dwelled forever jammed shoulder-to-shoulder into the upper circles of the subterranean metropolis. And out, finally, into the world of sunshine and air, of rain and wind, of trees and birds and rivers and hills.
“And may it be a while,” said Gialaurys fervently, “before we see that dreary place again!”
“Ah, we’ll be back in it gladly when Prestimion is Pontifex,” Septach Melayn said, gaily prodding him in the shoulder. “But we’ll all be old men with long gray beards by then!”
“Pontifex!” Prestimion snorted. “Let me be Coronal a little while first, if I may, once the present little obstacle is cleared away, before you send me hastening onto the next throne!”
“Oh, yes. By all means, Prestimion: first things first,” said Septach Melayn. “Coronal, and then Pontifex!” And they all laughed loudly. But it was more out of relief of being out of the Labyrinth than anything else, for there was little mirth in them just then, but only a great emptiness, and dark uncertainty over what might lie ahead. Just before their departure from the Labyrinth, Korsibar had made some surprising noises, yes, about appointing Prestimion to the new government when they had all reached the Castle. But who could say how sincere those promises would turn out to be, once the fluidities of the new situation had hardened into harsh reality?
They had emerged at the northernmost of the seven gateways of the Labyrinth, the one known as the Mouth of Waters, where the River Glayge that descended out of the distant foothills of Castle Mount ran past the city. The usual route north from the Labyrinth to the Mount was by riverboat along the Lower Glayge to the place where it emerged from Lake Roghoiz, and from the far side of Roghoiz onward via the Upper Glayge to the point where the land began to rise significantly and the river was no longer navigable. From there one proceeded by floater-car up through the steepening foothills to the high cities of the great mountain.
The Glayge was a swift and powerful river, but the stretch of it that flowed from Roghoiz southward to the Labyrinth was a mere tame thing, more of a canal than a river. Its banks had been paved long ago, in the remote era of Lord Balas and the Pontifex Kryphon, to control its flow and keep the waters of occasional winter floods from escaping over the barriers that protected the Labyrinth. So the early part of their voyage was a placid one, a sleepy uneventful trip by hired boat through the broad and virtually flat agricultural plain that was the valley of the Lower Glayge.
It was high summer here, a warm bright time when the golden-green sun of Majipoor hung directly overhead and its brilliance filled all the land. They had almost forgotten about the seasons during their sojourn underground. It had been late spring when they had gone down into the Labyrinth, already a balmy time of the year, for the climate in this entire section of central Alhanroel was never anything but mild. But now the full heat of midyear was on the valley. Off to the west, where the ruins of Velalisier, the ancient stone capital of the Metamorphs, lay in the midst of a dry barren wasteland, the sun must now be a monstrous frightful eye of flame; and in the far south, along the moist and torrid Aruachosian coast where the Glayge finally emptied into the sea, the air surely was thick with almost tangible humidity.
Here, though, the days were bright and warm but not in any way uncomfortable. To the men so long imprisoned in the joyless artificial depths of the Labyrinth, it was a splendid thing to feel the touch of sunlight against their cheeks. To fill their lungs with the sweet gusts of air that came riding on th
e southerly breezes, carrying the perfume of the myriad flowers of the far-off coastal jungles, yes! Or to stare upward wonderstruck at the immense transparent dome of the sky and watch in admiration as great gliding pink-bellied hieraxes, those huge free-souled birds of the highest zones of the atmosphere, went coasting serenely by overhead, displaying enormous wings that were more than twice the length of a tall man’s body in their spread from tip to tip.
They looked constantly to the north too, searching for the first sign of Castle Mount rising on the horizon. But that was only hopeful fantasy on their part. Castle Mount stood thirty miles high in the sky, piercing through the atmosphere and jutting up into the other empire that was space; but even so there was no seeing it from this far away.
“Do you espy it yet?” Gialaurys would ask, for he was less well-educated than the rest and knew little of scientific things, and Septach Melayn, ever playful, would say, “I wonder, could it be that grayish bit of darkness on our right-hand side?” To which Svor would then reply, “A cloud, Septach Melayn, only a cloud! As you know full well.”
And Gialaurys: “If the Mount is so high, why can’t it be seen from everywhere on Majipoor?”
To which Prestimion, making a sphere in the air with the outstretched fingers of both hands, said: “This is the shape of the world, Gialaurys. And this”—now extending his arms outward from his sides as far as they could go—“is the size of the world, if you are able to imagine it. They say there’s no world larger, of any on which mankind can live. They say that Majipoor has ten times the size around the middle of Old Earth, from which we all came so many hundreds of centuries ago.”
“What I hear is that it’s even bigger still. I’m told that it’s twelve or fourteen times greater about the middle than Earth,” said Svor.
“Ten times or twelve or fourteen, that makes no important distinction,” Prestimion said. “Whichever one it be, this is a huge world, Gialaurys, and as we move across it, it curves like this”—making the sphere with his fingers again—“and we are unable to see things that are a great distance from us, because the curve is so vast, and they are hidden on the far side of it. Even the Mount.”