To Prestimion, two thousand miles away, the snapping of the tension came to him like the breaking of some giant cable. He staggered under the impact of it, reeling backward in a sudden access of dizziness.
Instantly Dekkeret was at his side, steadying his arm. “My lord—”
“I don’t need any help, thanks,” said Prestimion, disengaging himself from Dekkeret’s grasp. He must not have sounded very convincing, though, for Dekkeret continued to hover watchfully by his side.
Prestimion thought he knew what had happened just now in the Procurator’s camp, but he was not certain. And in any event his voyage with the helmet and the battle with Venghenar Barjazid had brought him by now to the brink of exhaustion. He felt chilled, as though he had been swimming in icy waters, and his head was whirling. He closed his eyes, drew two or three deep breaths, struggled to find his equilibrium.
Then he looked toward the Lady. In the hollow, thin voice of a very tired man he asked her, “Is he really dead, then?”
She nodded solemnly. She looked pale and drawn. Surely she was weary as he was himself. “Gone, and no question of it. It was Septach Melayn who slew him, was it not?” And Maundigand-Klimd, to whom she had addressed the question, nodded, both heads at once, full confirmation.
“Then there will be no second civil war,” said Prestimion, and the first warm flickers of joy began to cut through the shroud of fatigue that had engulfed him. “We can give thanks to the Divine for that. But there’s still much for us to do before the world is whole again.”
Dekkeret said, “My lord, you should put the helmet down, now. Simply the wearing of it must draw energy from you. And after what you have done—”
“But I’ve just told you that I’m not finished. Stand back, Dekkeret! Stand back!”
And put his hand to the ascent control of the helmet once again before anyone could protest, and sent himself soaring upward a second time.
Was this wise? he wondered.
Yes. Yes. Yes. While he still had strength left in him after the voyage to the Stoienzar, this was something he must do.
He drifted in silence like a great bird of the night above the mighty cities of Majipoor. They sparkled below him in all their glittering majesty, Ni-moya and Stee, Pidruid and Dulorn, Khyntor and Tolaghai and Alaisor and Bailemoona.
And he felt the weight of the madness in them. He sensed above all else the anguish of the myriad sprung and riven souls who had suffered such harm in the moment when he had ripped the tale of the war against Korsibar from the collective memory of the world. His own heart was drawn downward by sorrow as he perceived, far more clearly even than when he had traveled the world with the Lady’s circlet on his brow, how much damage he had done.
But what he had done then, he hoped to undo now.
The helmet of the Barjazids had enormously more power than the circlet of the Lady. Where she could reassure and comfort, the wearer of the helmet was able to transform.
And heal, perhaps. Could it be done? He would find out. Now.
He touched a shattered mind with his own. Touched two, three, a thousand, ten thousand. Drew all the tumbled pieces together. Made the rough places smooth.
Yes! Yes!
It was a fearful effort. He could feel his own vital force flowing outward like a river, even as he healed those with whom he came in contact. But it was working. He was certain of it. He went on and on, making a secret and silent grand processional around the world, swooping down here in Sippulgar, here in Sisivondal, here in Treymone, here in his own Muldemar, touching, mending, healing.
The task was immense. He knew he could not hope to achieve it all in this one journey. But he was determined to make a beginning here and now. To bring back this day from that bleak realm in which he had forced them to wander for so long as many as he could of those whom he had condemned to madness.
He moved randomly about the world. The madness was everywhere.
He halted here.
Here.
Here.
Again, again, again, Prestimion descended, touched, repaired. He had no idea, any longer, whether he was moving from north to south or from east to west, whether this was Narabal he was passing over or Velathys or some city of Castle Mount itself. He went on and on, heedless of the expense of spirit that he was undertaking. “I am Prestimion the Coronal Lord, the Divine’s own anointed king,” he said to them, a hundred times, a thousand, “and I embrace you, I bring you the deepest of love, I offer you the gift of your own self returned. I am Prestimion—I am Prestimion—I am Prestimion—the Coronal Lord—”
But what was this? The contact was breaking. The sky itself seemed to be shaking apart. He was falling—falling—
Plunging toward the sea. Whirling, plummeting, descending headlong into darkness—“My lord, can you hear me?”
Dekkeret’s voice, that was. Prestimion opened his eyes, no easy thing to accomplish in his dazed, numbed state, and saw the burly broad-shouldered form of Dekkeret kneeling beside him as he lay stretched full length on the floor of the room. The helmet of the Barjazids was in the younger man’s hands.
“What are you doing with that?” Prestimion demanded.
Dekkeret, reddening, laid the thing beside him, putting it down beyond Prestimion’s reach. “Forgive me, my lord. I had to take it from you.”
“You—took—it—from—me?”
“You would have died if you wore it any longer. We could see you going from us, right here. Dinitak said, ‘Get it off his head,’ and I told him it was forbidden to touch a Coronal in that way, that it was sacrilege, but he said to take it off anyway, or Majipoor would need a new Coronal within the hour. So I removed it. I had no choice, my lord. Send me to the tunnels, if you wish. But I could not stand here and watch you die.”
“And if I ordered you to give it back to me now, Dekkeret?”
“I would not give it to you, my lord,” said Dekkeret calmly.
Prestimion nodded. He forced a faint smile and sat up a little way. “You are a good man, Dekkeret, and a very brave one. But for you nothing that we have achieved this day would have happened. You, and this boy Dinitak—”
“You are not offended, my lord, that I took the helmet from you?”
“It was a bold thing to do. Overbold, one might almost say. But no: no, Dekkeret, I’m not offended. You did the right thing, I suppose.—Help me get up, will you?”
Dekkeret lifted him as though he weighed nothing at all, and set him on his feet, and waited a moment as though fearing he would fall. Prestimion glanced around the room: at his mother, at Dinitak, at Maundigand-Klimd. The Su-Suheris was as inscrutable as ever, a remote figure displaying no emotion. The other two still showed evidence of the fatigue of the battle, but they seemed now to be making a recovery. As was he.
The Lady said, “What were you doing, Prestimion?”
“Healing the madness. Yes, mother, healing it. With the aid of the helmet it can be done, though it’s hard work, and won’t be finished overnight.” He looked down at the helmet, close by Dekkeret’s foot, and shook his head. “What appalling power there is in that thing! I find myself tempted to destroy it, and any more like it that may be found in Dantirya Sambail’s camp. But what has been invented once can come into the world a second time. Better that we keep it for ourselves, and find some good way to put its great force to use—beginning with the task I commenced just now, of going among the poor mad ones and bringing them back among us.”