This morning her children’s self-absorption seemed less amusing to Varaile than it usually did. The disturbing report from the Labyrinth cast a somber shadow over everything. How would they react, she wondered, if they knew that their father might suddenly be much closer than ever before to becoming Pontifex, and that they could all find themselves uprooted from their good life at the Castle and forced to move along to the grim subterranean Labyrinth, the Pontifical seat far to the south, before long?
Varaile forced herself to sweep all such thoughts aside.
That Prestimion would one day be Pontifex had been inevitable from the hour that he had been anointed as Coronal and they had placed the starburst crown upon his head. Confalume was very old. He might die today, or next month, or next year; but sooner or later, and more likely sooner than later, his time had to come. Beyond question Akbalik and Simbilon must understand quite well what that would mean for them all. As for Tuanelys, if she did not know now, she would have to learn. And to accept. With high rank comes the obligation to conduct oneself in a royal fashion, even if one is only a child.
By the time she had finished eating Varaile felt fully in command of herself again. It was time now for her morning conference with Prestimion’s ministers: in his absence from the Castle, she served as regent in the Coronal’s stead.
Teotas was waiting for her outside the morning-room.
His face was even more grave than usual today, and its folds and furrows looked as though they had deepened overnight. Once he had resembled his older brother Prestimion so closely that one who did not know them well might almost have taken them for twins, though in truth there was a decade’s gap between them in age. But Teotas had a sharp, hot, brooding temper that Prestimion lacked, and here in his middle years it had carved gulleys in his face that made him seem much older than he was, whereas Prestimion’s skin was still unlined. There was no mistaking Teotas for the Coronal any longer; but it was not easy to believe that Teotas was the younger brother.
“Fiorinda gave you the message from the Labyrinth?”
“Eventually. I think she would rather have hidden it from me altogether.”
“We would all like to hide it from ourselves, I think,” Teotas said. “But from some things there’s no hiding, eh, Varaile?”
“Will he die?”
“No one knows. But this latest event, whatever it is, undoubtedly brings him closer to the day. I think, though, that we have a little more time left to us in this place.”
“Are you saying that because you know that it’s what I want to hear, Teotas? Or do you actually have some hard information? Did the Pontifex have a stroke or didn’t he?”
“If he did, it was a very light one. There was some difficulty in one leg and one arm—his mind went dark for an instant—”
“Fiorinda told me about the leg and the arm. Not about the darkness in his mind. Come on: what else?”
“That is all. He has his mages treating him now.”
“And also a physician or two, I hope?”
Teotas said, shrugging, “You know what Confalume is like. Maybe he has a doctor with him, and maybe not. But the incense is burning round the clock, of that I’m sure, and the spells are being cast thick and fast. May they only be efficacious ones.”
“So do I pray,” said Varaile, with a derisive snort.
They walked quickly down the winding corridors that led to the Stiamot throne-room, where the meeting would be held. The route took them past the royal robing-chamber and the splendid judgment-hall that Prestimion had caused to be constructed out of a warren of little rooms adjacent to the grandiose throne-room of Lord Confalume.
Every Coronal put his own mark on the Castle with new construction. The judgment-hall, that magnificent vaulted chamber with great arching frosted windows and gigantic glittering chandeliers, was Prestimion’s chief contribution to the innermost part of the Castle, though he had also brought about the building of the great Prestimion Archive, a museum in which a trove of historical treasure had been brought together, along the outside margin of the central sector that was known as the Inner Castle. And he had still other ambitious construction plans, Varaile knew, if only the Divine would grant him a longer stay on the Coronal’s throne.
Nevertheless, for all the stupefying grandeur of the glorious judgment-hall and Lord Confalume’s throne-room beside it, Prestimion had preferred since the beginning of his reign to spurn those imposing settings and to hold as many official functions as he could in the ancient Stiamot throne-room, a simple, even austere, little stone-floored chamber that supposedly had come down almost unchanged from the Castle’s earliest days.
As Varaile entered it now, she saw nearly all of the high peers of the realm arrayed within: the High Counsellor Septach Melayn and the Grand Admiral Gialaurys and the magus Maundigand-Klimd, and Navigorn of Hoikmar and Duke Dembitave of Tidias and three or four others, as well as the Pontifical delegate, Phraatakes Rem, and the Hierarch Bernimorn, the representative of the Lady of the Isle at the Castle. They rose as she came in, and Varaile signalled them back into their seats with a flick of her fingertips.
Of the potent figures of the kingdom only Prestimion’s other brother, Prince Abrigant, was missing. In the early years of Prestimion’s reign Abrigant had played an important role in government affairs—it was his discovery of the rich iron mines of Skakkenoir that had been the foundation of much of the great prosperity of the kingdom under Prestimion’s rule—but more recently he had withdrawn to the family estates down-slope at Muldemar, the responsibility for which had fallen to him by inheritance, and he spent most of his time there. But all of the others had gathered. The presence of so many great dignitaries here at the Council meeting today intensified the misgivings that Varaile already felt.
Quickly she crossed the room to the low white throne of roughly hewn marble that was the Coronal’s seat, and today, with the Coronal away, was hers as regent. She glanced to her left, where Septach Melayn sat, the elegant long-limbed swordsman who had been Prestimion’s dearest friend since his youth, and who was, next to Varaile herself, the adviser whose word he respected the most. Septach Melayn met Varaile’s gaze uneasily, almost sadly. Gialaurys—Navigorn—Dembitave—they appeared to be uncomfortable too. Only the towering Su-Suheris magus, Maundigand-Klimd, was inscrutable, as always.
“I am already aware,” she began, “that the Pontifex is ill. Can anyone tell me precisely how ill?” She turned her attention toward the Pontifical representative. “Phraatakes Rem, this news comes by way of you, am I correct?”
“Yes, milady.” He was a small, tidy, gray-haired man who for the past nine years had been the Pontifex’s official delegate at the Castle—essentially an ambassador from the senior monarch to the junior one. The intricate golden spiral that was the Labyrinth symbol was affixed to the breast of his soft, velvety-looking gray-green tunic. “The message arrived last night. There have been no later ones. We know nothing more than what you surely have already heard.”