All he could see from here was water and more water, curving away into infinity. That distant point of brightness on the horizon—could it be, Prestimion wondered, the Isle of the Lady, from which he had so recently come? Probably not. Probably even the Isle was too far to glimpse from here.
Once again he found it a burden to contemplate the vast size of Majipoor. The mere thought of it was a weight on his spirit. What madness it was to pretend that a planet so huge could be governed by just a couple of men in fancy robes sitting on splendid thrones! The thing that held the world together was the consent of the governed, who by voluntary choice yielded themselves up to the authority of the Pontifex and the Coronal. And that consent seemed to be breaking down now, at least in Zimroel. It would, apparently, need to be restored by military force. And, Prestimion asked himself, just what sort of consent was that?
Prestimion’s mood had been prevailingly dark for days, a darkness that rarely left him more than moments at a time. He could not tell how much of that he owed to the strain of so much recent travel, he who was finally being forced to admit that he was no longer young, and how much to the despair that he felt over the inevitability of a new war.
For there would be a war.
So he had told his mother weeks ago at the Isle of Sleep, and so he believed with every atom of his being. Mandralisca and his faction had to be eliminated, or the world would split asunder. The great final battle against the villainy that those people represented would be fought, if he had to lead the march on Ni-moya himself. But Prestimion hoped it would not come to that. Dekkeret is my sword now, is what he had told the Lady Therissa, and that was true enough. He himself longed for the peace of the Labyrinth. That thought astonished him even as it formed in his mind. But it was the truth, the Divine’s own truth.
A hand touched his shoulder from behind, the lightest and quickest of touches. “Prestimion—?”
“What is it, Septach Melayn?”
“Is time, I would like to suggest, for you to stop staring at the sea and come away from that window. Is time for a little wine, perhaps. A game of dice, even?”
Prestimion grinned. So many times, over the years, had Septach Melayn’s well-timed frivolity pulled him back from the brink of despondency!
“Dice! How fine that would be,” he said: “The Pontifex of Majipoor and his High Spokesman down on their knees on the floor of the royal suite like boys, rolling for the triple eyes, or the hand and the forks! Would anyone believe it?”
“I remember a time,” said Gialaurys, speaking as though to the empty air, “when Septach Melayn and I were playing tavern dice on the deck of the riverboat that was taking us up the Glayge from the Labyrinth after Korsibar had stolen the throne, and just as he rolled the double ten I looked up and there was the new star blazing in the sky, the blue-white one, so very bright, that for a time people called it Lord Korsibar’s Star. And Duke Svor came out on deck—ah, he was a slippery one, that little Svor!—and saw the star, and said, ‘That star is our salvation. It means the death of Korsibar and the rising of Prestimion.’ Which was the Divine’s own truth. That star is still shining brightly to this very time. I saw it just last night, high above, between Thorius and Xavial. Prestimion’s star! The star of your ascendance, it is, and it still shines! Look you for it tonight, your majesty, and it will speak to you and lift your heart.” Now he was facing directly toward the Pontifex. “I pray you, put all this gloom of yours aside, Prestimion. Your star is still there.”
“You are very kind,” said Prestimion gently.
He was more deeply touched than he could say. In the thirty years of his friendship with the massive, slow-moving, inarticulate Gialaurys he had never heard anything like such eloquence out of him.
But of course Septach Melayn had to puncture the moment. “Only a moment ago, Gialaurys, you told us your fine mind was losing its keen edge,” the swordsman said. “And yet here you are recalling a game of dice we played half a lifetime ago, and accurately quoting to us the exact words Duke Svor spoke that evening. Is this not most inconsistent of you, dear Gialaurys?”
“I remember what is important to me, Septach Melayn,” Gialaurys replied. “And so I recall things of half a lifetime ago more clearly than I do what I was served last night at dinner, or the color of the robe I wore.” And he glared at Septach Melayn as though, after all these decades of having been on the receiving end of the quicker man’s banter, he would gladly catch Septach Melayn up in his huge hands and snap his slender body in half. But it had ever been thus with those two.
Prestimion said, laughing now for the first time in much too long, “The wine is a good idea, Septach Melayn. But not, I think, the game of dice.” He crossed the room to the sideboard, where a few wine-flasks sat, and after a moment’s inner deliberation chose the creamy young golden wine of Stoien, that grew so old so fast it was never exported beyond the city of its manufacture. He poured out three bowls’ full, and they sat quietly for a while, slowly drinking that thick, rich, strong wine.
“If there is to be a war,” said Septach Melayn after a time, and there was an odd tension in his voice, “then I have a favor to ask of you, Prestimion.”
“There will be a war. We have no alternative but to eradicate those creatures.”
“Well, then, when the war begins,” Septach Melayn went on, “I trust you will permit me to play a part in it.”
“And me as well,” said Gialaurys quickly.
Prestimion did not find these requests at all surprising.
Of course he had no intention of granting them; but it pleased him that the fires of valor still burned so strongly in these two. Did they not understand, he wondered, that their fighting days were over?
Gialaurys, like so many big-bodied men of enormous physical strength, had never been famous for his suppleness or agility, though that had not mattered in his years as a warrior. But, as also tends to happen to many men of his build, he had thickened greatly with age, and he moved now in a terribly slow and careful way.
Septach Melayn, whip-thin and eternally limber, seemed as quick and lithe as he had been long ago, essentially unchanged by the years. But the network of fine lines around his penetrating blue eyes told a different story, and Prestimion suspected that that famous cascade of tumbling ringlets had more than a little white hair mixed now with the gold. It was hardly possible that he still could have the lightning-swift reflexes that had made him invincible in hand-to-hand combat.
Prestimion knew that the battlefield was no place for either of them these days, any more than it was for him.
Delicately he said, “The war, as I know you understand, will be Dekkeret’s to fight, not mine or yours. But he’ll be apprised of your offers. I know that he’ll want to draw on your skill and experience.”
Gialaurys chuckled heavily. “I can see us entering into Ni-moya now, sweeping all opposition aside. What a day that will be, when we go marching six abreast up Rodamaunt Promenade! And it will have been my great pleasure personally to lead the troops north from Piliplok. The invasion army will land in Piliplok, of course.—And you know, Prestimion, what we rough men from Piliplok think of those soft Ni-moyans and their eternal pursuit of pleasure. What joy it will be for us to knock down their flimsy gates and march into their pretty city!” He rose and walked about the room, making such effeminate mincing gestures that a roar of delighted laughter came from Septach Melayn. “ ‘Shall we go to the Gossamer Galleria today to buy a fine robe, my dear?’ ” said Gialaurys in a high-pitched strangled voice. “ ‘And then, I think, dinner at the Narabal Island. The breast of gammigammil with thognis sauce, how I adore it! The Pidruid oysters! Oh, my dear—!’ ”