“Have you heard?” Fisiolo said. “Prestimion’s got Dantirya Sambail penned up in the tunnels! Has him hanging on the wall in heavy irons, so I’m told. Can you imagine such a thing? It’s the talk of the Castle.”
“We’ve only just learned of it,” said Serithorn. “Well, if the story’s true, no doubt the Coronal had good reason for putting him there.”
“And what could that have been? Did nasty Dantirya Sambail say something dreadfully rude? Dantirya Sambail make the starburst sign the wrong way, maybe? Dantirya Sambail break wind at the coronation ceremony?—Come to think of it, was Dantirya Sambail even at the coronation ceremony?”
“I don’t remember seeing him arrive at the Castle at all,” Gonivaul said. “When we all came back here after Prankipin’s funeral.”
“Nor I,” said Navigorn. “And I was here when the main caravan from the Labyrinth arrived. Dantirya Sambail wasn’t with it.”
“Yet we are reliably informed that he is here,” said Serithorn. “Has been for some time, it seems. Long enough to offend Prestimion and be imprisoned, and yet nobody remembers seeing him arrive. This is very strange. Dantirya Sambail creates whirlwinds of noise about himself wherever he goes. How could he have come to the Castle, and none of us know it?”
“Strange, yes,” said Gonivaul.
“Strange indeed,” added Count Fisiolo. “But I confess that I like the idea that Prestimion has managed somehow to put that repulsive loathsome monster in irons. Don’t you?”
5
The Procurator of Ni-moya was much on Prestimion’s mind, too, in the days that followed the coronation festival. But he was in no hurry to deal with his treacherous kinsman, who had betrayed him again and again in the twistings and turnings of the late civil war. Let him languish some while longer in the dungeon into which he had been cast, Prestimion thought. It was necessary first to figure out some way of handling his case.
Beyond any question Dantirya Sambail was guilty of high treason. More than anyone, except, perhaps, the Lady Thismet herself, he had spurred Korsibar on to his insane rebellion. The breaking of the dam on the Iyann had been his doing, too, a savage act that had caused unthinkable destruction. And in the battle of Thegomar Edge he had lifted his hand against Prestimion in single combat, jeeringly offering to let the contest decide which of them would be the next Coronal and attacking Prestimion with axe and saber. Prestimion had prevailed in that encounter, though it was a close thing. But he had been unable to slay his defeated kinsman then and there on the battlefield, which was what he deserved. Instead Prestimion had had Dantirya Sambail and his malevolent henchman Mandralisca hauled away as prisoners, to be brought to judgment at a later time.
But how, Prestimion wondered, could the Procurator be put on trial for crimes that nobody, not even the accused man himself, was able to remember? Who would stand forth as his accuser? What evidence could be adduced against him? “This man was the chief fomenter of the civil war,” yes. But what civil war? “It was his treasonous intention to seize the royal throne for himself once he had arranged the death of his puppet Korsibar.” Korsibar? Who was Korsibar? “He is guilty of menacing the life of the legitimate Coronal on the field of battle with deadly weapons.” What battle, where, when?
Prestimion had no answers to these questions. And there were, anyway, more pressing problems to deal with first, here in the early weeks of his reign.
The coronation guests, most of them, had scattered far and wide to their homes. The princes and dukes and earls and mayors had gone back to their own domains; the former Coronal who now was Confalume Pontifex had taken himself down the River Glayge on the long somber voyage that would deliver him to his new subterranean home in the Labyrinth; the archers and jousters and wrestlers and swordsmen who had come to show their skills at the coronation games were dispersed as well. The Princess Therissa had gone back to Muldemar House to prepare for her journey to the Isle of Sleep and the tasks that awaited her there. The Castle was suddenly a much quieter place as Prestimion entered into the tasks of the new regime.
And there was so much to do. He had desired the throne and its duties with all his heart; but now that he had had his wish, he was awed by the boundless tasks he faced.
“I hardly know where to begin,” he confessed, looking up wearily at Septach Melayn and Gialaurys.
The three of them were in the spacious room, inlaid everywhere with rare woods and strips of shining metal, that was the core of the Coronal’s official suite. The throne-room was for the pomp and grandeur of state; these chambers were where the actual business of being Coronal took place.
Prestimion was seated at his splendid starburst grained desk of red palisander, and long-legged Septach Melayn lounged elegantly beside the broad curving window overlooking the sweeping, airy depths of the abyss of space that bordered the Castle on this side of the Mount. The thick-bodied, heavy-sinewed Gialaurys sat hunched on a backless bench to Prestimion’s left.
“It’s very simple, lordship,” said Gialaurys. “Begin at the beginning, and then continue to the next thing, and the next, and the one after that.”
Coming from Septach Melayn, such advice would have been mockery; but big steadfast Gialaurys had no capacity for irony, and when he spoke, in that deep, slow, gritty rumble of a voice of his, the words flattened by the blunt accents of his native city of Piliplok, it was always with the greatest seriousness. Prestimion’s mercurial little companion, the late and much lamented Duke Svor, had often mistaken Gialaurys’s stolidity for stupidity. But Gialaurys was not stupid at all, just ponderously sincere.
Prestimion laughed amiably. “Well said, Gialaurys! But which thing is the first one, and which the next? If only it were that easy to know.”
“Well, Prestimion, let us make a list,” said Septach Melayn. He ticked things off on his fingers. “One: appointing new court officials. On which we’ve made a fairly good start, I’d say. You’ve got yourself a new High Counsellor, thank you very much. And Gialaurys here will be a superb Grand Admiral, I’m sure. Et cetera et cetera. Two: repairing the prosperity of the districts that suffered damage during the war. Your brother Abrigant has some thoughts on that subject, incidentally, and wants to see you later in the day. Three—”
Septach Melayn hesitated. Gialaurys said at once, “Three: doing something about bringing Dantirya Sambail to trial.”
“Let that one go for a while,” Prestimion said. “It’s a complicated matter.”
“Four,” went on Gialaurys, undaunted: “Interviewing everyone who fought on Korsibar’s side in the late war, and making certain that no lingering disloyalties remain that could threaten the security of—”
“No,” said Prestimion. “Strike that from the list. There never was any war, remember? How could anyone still be loyal to Korsibar, Gialaurys, when Korsibar never existed?”
Gialaurys offered a scowl and a grunt of displeasure. “Even so, Prestimion—”
“I tell you, there’s nothing to worry about here. Most of Korsibar’s lieutenants died at Thegomar Edge—Farholt, Mandrykarn, Venta, Farquanor, all that crowd—and I have no fear of the ones who survived. Navigorn, for instance. Korsibar’s best general, he was. But he begged forgiveness right on the battlefield, do you recall, when he came up to surrender just after Korsibar was killed? And sincerely so. He’ll serve me well on the Council. Oljebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul—they sold out to Korsibar, yes, but they don’t remember doing it, and they can’t do any harm now in any case. Duke Oljebbin will go to the Labyrinth and become High Spokesman for the Pontifex, and good riddance. Gonivaul gets sent into retirement in Bombifale. Serithorn’s useful and amusing; I’ll keep him around. Well, who else? Name me the names of people whom you suspect of being disloyal.”