“A stroke, is it?” said Varaile bluntly. She was never one for mincing words.
The Pontifical delegate squirmed a little in his seat. It was disconcerting to see that polished diplomat, always so unctuous and self-assured, show such a visible sign of distress. “His majesty experienced some degree of vertigo—a numbness in his hand, an uncertainty of support in his left leg. He has taken to his bed, and his mages attend him. We await further reports.”
“It sounds very much like a stroke to me,” said Varaile.
“I can offer no opinion concerning that, milady.”
Yegan of Low Morpin, a stolid, rather humorless prince whose presence on the Council had long mystified Varaile, said, “A stroke is not necessarily fatal, Lady Varaile. There are those who have lived for many years after suffering one.”
“Thank you for that observation, Prince Yegan.” And to Phraatakes Rem: “Has the Pontifex been generally in good health thus far this season, would you say?”
“Indeed he has, milady, active and energetic. Making proper allowance for his age, of course. But he has always been an extremely vigorous man.”
“How old is he, though?” Septach Melayn said. “Eighty-five? Ninety?” He left his seat and edgily began to pace the little room, his long legs taking him from side to side and back again in just a few quick strides.
“Perhaps even older than that,” said Yegan.
“He was Coronal for forty years and then some,” offered Navigorn of Hoikmar, speaking with a wheeze. He once had been a powerful figure of a man, a great military leader in his time, but lately was grown fat and slow. “And Pontifex, now, for twenty years after that, is that not so? And therefore—”
“Yes. Therefore he must be very old,” said Varaile sharply. She struggled to rein in her impatience. These men were all ten and twenty years her senior, and their days of real decisiveness were behind them; her quick-spirited nature grew irritable easily when they wandered into these circuitous ruminations.
To the Hierarch Bernimorn she said, “Has the Lady been informed?”
“We have already sent word to the Isle,” said the Hierarch, a slim, pale woman of some considerable age, who managed to seem at once both frail and commanding.
“Good.” And, to Dembitave: “What about Lord Prestimion? He’s in Deepenhow Vale, I think. Or Bombifale.”
“Lord Prestimion is at present in the city of Fa, milady. A messenger is preparing at this moment to set out for Fa to bring him the news.”
“Who are you going to send?” Navigorn asked. He said it in a thick, blunt, almost belligerent way.
Dembitave gave the old warrior a puzzled look. “Why—how would I know? One of the regular Castle couriers is going, I suppose.”
“News like this ought not to come from a stranger. I’ll bear the message myself.”
Color flared in Dembitave’s pale cheeks. He was Septach Melayn’s cousin, the Duke of Tidias, a proud and somewhat touchy man, sixty years of age. He and Navigorn had never cared much for each other.
Plainly he took Navigorn’s intervention now as some kind of rebuke. For a moment or two he proffered no response. Then he said stiffly, “As you wish, milord Navigorn.”
“What about Prince Dekkeret?” Varaile asked. “One would think he ought to know too.”
There was a second awkward silence in the room. Varaile stared from one abashed face to another. The answer was all too clear. No one had thought to tell the heir apparent that the Pontifex might be dying.
“I’m told he has gone off to Normork with his friend Dinitak to see his mother,” Varaile said crisply. “He too should be made aware of this. Teotas—”
He snapped to attention. “I’ll tend to it immediately,” he said, and went from the chamber.
And now? What was she supposed to do next?
Improvising swiftly, she said to the Pontifical delegate, “You will, of course, communicate our deep concern for his majesty’s health, our dismay at his illness, our overriding wish that this episode prove to be only a moment’s infirmity—” She searched for some further expression of sympathy, found nothing appropriate, let her voice break off in mid-statement.
But Phraatakes Rem, deftly taking his cue, smoothly replied, “I will do that, have no fear.—But I beg you, milady, let us not overreact. There was no real urgency in the phrasing of the message I received. If the High Spokesman had felt his majesty’s death to be imminent, he would have put matters in a very different way. I understand the distress that milady might feel over an impending change in the administration, and of course each of us here must feel the same distress, knowing that his role in the government may soon be coming to its end, but even so—”
The deep gravelly rumble that was the voice of the burly, ponderous Grand Admiral Gialaurys cut into the Pontifical delegate’s measured tones. “But what if Confalume really is in a bad way? I point out that we have a magus among us who clearly sees all that is to come. Should we not consult him?”
“Why not?” cried Septach Melayn heartily. “Why should we leave ourselves in the dark?” His distaste for sorcery of all sorts was as well known as the Grand Admiral’s credulous faith in the power of wizardry. But these two, who had been Prestimion’s great mainstays in the war against the usurper Korsibar, had long since come to a loving acceptance of the vast chasms of personality and belief that lay between them.
“By all means, let’s ask the high magus! What do you think, Maundigand-Klimd? Is old Confalume about to leave us or not?”
“Yes,” said Varaile. “Cast the Pontifex’s future for us, Maundigand-Klimd. His future and ours.”
All eyes turned toward the Su-Suheris, who, as usual, stood apart from the rest, silent, lost in alien ruminations beyond the fathoming of ordinary beings.
He was a forbidding-looking figure, well over seven feet tall, resplendent in the rich purple robes and jewel-encrusted collar that marked his rank as the preeminent magus of the court. His two pale hairless heads rode majestically at the summit of his long, columnar, forking neck like elongated globes of marble, and his four narrow emerald-green eyes were, as ever, shrouded in impenetrable mystery.
Of all the non-human races that had come to settle on Majipoor, the Su-Suheris were by far the most enigmatic. Most people, put off by their wintry manner and the eerie otherworldliness of their appearance, looked upon them as monsters and feared them. Even those Su-Suheris who, like Maundigand-Klimd, mingled readily with people of other species never entered into any sort of real intimacy with them. Yet their undeniable skills as mages and diviners gave them entry into the highest circles.
Maundigand-Klimd had explained to Prestimion, once, the technique by which he saw the future. Establishing a linkage of some type between his pair of minds, he was able to create a vortex of neural forces that thrust him briefly forward down the river of time, a journey from which he would return with glimpses, however cloudy and ambiguous they could sometimes be, of that which was to come. He entered that divining mode now.
Varaile watched him tensely. She was no great believer in the merit of sorcery herself, any more than Prestimion or Septach Melayn were, but she trusted Maundigand-Klimd and regarded his divinations as far more reliable than those of most others of his profession. If he were to announce now that the Pontifex lay on the brink of death—
But the Su-Suheris simply said, after a time, “There is no immediate reason for fear, milady.”
“Confalume will live?”
“He is not in present danger of dying.”
Varaile let out a deep sigh and leaned back in relief against the throne. “Very well, then,” she said, after a moment. “We have been given a reprieve, it seems. Shall we accept it without further question, and move on to other things? Yes. Let us do that.” She turned to Belditan the Younger of Gimkandale, the chancellor of the Council, who kept the agenda for Council meetings. “If you will be good enough to remind us, Count Belditan, of the matters awaiting attention today—”