Eventually the proctors were finished asking questions, at least, and were huddling off in one corner of the library conferring among themselves before leaving. The bodies had been removed from the street outside and two of the gardeners were hosing away the bloodstains. Bleakly Varaile contemplated the tasks immediately ahead of her.
First, to get a magus in here to purify the house, cleanse it of the stain that was on it now. Suicide was a serious business; it brought down all sorts of darknesses upon a house. Then to track down Klaristen’s family, wherever they might live, and convey condolences and the information that all burial expenses would be paid, along with a substantial gift as an expression of gratitude for the dead girl’s services. Next, to get in touch with someone on her father’s staff in Canzilaine, and have him find out just who Hebbidanto Throle and his wife had been, and where their survivors could be reached, and what sort of consolatory gesture would be appropriate. Some large sum of money at the very least, but perhaps other expressions of sympathy would be required.
What a mess! What an awful mess!
She had been very bitter about being left at home while her father went off to the coronation with Count Fisiolo. “The Castle will be too wild and drunken a place this week for the likes of you, young lady,” Simbilon Khayf had said, and that was that. The truth of it, Varaile knew, was that her father wanted to be wild and drunken himself this week, he and his lordly aristocratic friend the foul-mouthed and blasphemous Count Fisiolo, and didn’t care to have her around. So be it: no one, not even his only daughter, ever defied the will of Simbilon Khayf. She had obediently remained behind; and how lucky it was, she thought, that she had been here to cope with this thing today, rather than having left the house and its responsibilities to the servants.
As the proctors were leaving, the head man said in a low voice to her, “You know, lady, we’ve had several cases like this lately, though nothing quite as bad as this one. There’s some kind of epidemic of craziness going around. You’d do well to keep a close eye on your people here, in case any of the others happens to start going over the edge.”
“I’ll bear that in mind, officer,” said Varaile, though the thought of monitoring the sanity of her staff was unappealing to her.
The proctors departed. Varaile felt a headache now beginning to come on, but went up to the study to set about what needed to be done. Everything had to be under control before Simbilon Khayf returned from the coronation.
An epidemic of craziness?
How odd. But these were unusual times. Even she had felt uncharacteristic moments of depression and even confusion in recent days. Some hormonal thing, she supposed. But moods of that sort had never been a problem for her before.
She sent for Gawon Barl, the head steward of the house, and asked him to set about arranging for the purification rites immediately. “Also I need to have the address of Klaristen’s father and mother, or some kin of hers, at least,” she said. “And then—these poor people from Canzilaine—”
4
Once again the Castle was the scene of coronation games, the second time in the past three years. Once again grandstands had been constructed along three sides of the great sunny greensward that was Vildivar Close, just downhill from the Ninety-Nine Steps. Once again the greatest ones of the realm, the other two Powers and the members of the Council and the earls and dukes and princes of a hundred provinces, were gathered to celebrate the accession of the new king.
But no one but Prestimion and Gialaurys and Septach Melayn was able to remember those earlier games, the ones that had been held in honor of the Coronal Lord Korsibar, any more than anyone remembered Korsibar himself. The foot races, the jousting, the wrestling, the contests at archery and all the rest—forgotten by winners and losers alike. Removed from memory. Obliterated by Prestimion’s team of sorcerers, acting together in one mighty effort of the magical art. All that had happened in that other round of games had been unhappened. Today’s games were the games of Lord Prestimion, lawful successor to Lord Confalume. Lord Korsibar had never been. Even the sorcerers who had worked the unhappening had had to forget their own deed, by Prestimion’s command.
“Let the archers come forth!” cried the Master of the Games. Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar held that honorary title this day.
As the contestants filed onto the field, a little murmur of wonderment went up from the crowd. Lord Prestimion himself was among them.
No one had expected the new Coronal to be on the field this day. But it should not have been a huge surprise, really. Archery had ever been Prestimion’s great sport: he was a master of the art. And also a man within whose breast the fires of competition burned fiercely at all times. Those who knew him well knew that it would not have been at all like him to pass up a chance to demonstrate his skill. But even so—for the Coronal to compete in his own coronation games—how strange! How unusual!
Prestimion had gone out of his way today to seem like nothing more than an eager seeker for the prize at archery. He was clad in the royal colors, a close-fitting golden doublet and green breeches, but he wore no circlet about his forehead, nor any other badge of office. Some stranger who had no idea which of these dozen men who carried bows was Coronal might perhaps have identified him by the look of great presence and authority that had always been the mark of his demeanor; but more likely the short statured man with the close-cropped dull-yellow hair would have gone unnoticed in that group of robust, heartily athletic men.
Glaydin, the long-limbed youngest son of Serithorn of Samivole, was the first to shoot. He was a skillful archer, and Prestimion watched approvingly as he let his arrows fly.
Then came Kaitinimon, the new Duke of Bailemoona, who still wore a yellow mourning band about his arm in honor of his father, the late Duke Kanteverel. Kanteverel had died with Korsibar at the bloody battle of Thegomar Edge; but not even Kaitinimon knew that. That his father was dead, yes, that much he understood. But the true circumstances of Kanteverel’s death were clouded, as were the deaths of all who had fallen in the battles of the civil war, by the pattern of sorcery that Prestimion’s mages had woven around the world.
That spell of oblivion had been cunningly designed to allow the survivors of the war’s numberless victims to weave explanatory fantasies of their own that would fill the inner void created by the bare knowledge, unadorned by any factual detail, that their kinsmen no longer were among the living. Perhaps Kaitinimon believed that Kanteverel had died of a sudden seizure while visiting his western estates, or that a swamp-fever had taken him off during a tour of the humid south. Whatever it was, it was anything but the truth.
Kaitinimon handled his bow well. So did the third competitor, the tall hawk-faced forester Rizlail of Megenthorp, who, like Prestimion, had learned the art of bowmanship from the famed Earl Kamba of Mazadone. Then a stir went through the crowd when the next archer stepped forward, for he was one of the two members of the contending group that came from non-human stock, and a Su-Suheris at that, a member of that strange double-headed race that had lately begun to settle in some numbers on Majipoor. His name was announced as Gabin-Badinion.
How would someone with two heads take proper aim? Might the heads not disagree about the best placement of the bow? But it was no problem, evidently, for Gabin-Badinion. With icy precision he ably filled the inner rings of the target with his shafts, and gave the crowd a brusque two-headed nod by way of acknowledging its applause.
It was Prestimion’s turn now.
He carried with him the great bow that Earl Kamba had given him when he was still a boy, a bow so powerful that few grown men could draw it, though Prestimion handled it with ease. In the battles of the civil war he had worked much destruction with this bow; but how much better, he thought, to be employing it in a contest of skill, instead of taking the lives of honorable men!