"None, Prestimion. He doesn't know a thing about it, and he's not going to find out."

"No?"

"No. I made her promise not to tell her father a word."

"And shell keep that promise, of course."

I think she will. I gave her a good price for her silence. She and Simbilon Khayf are going to be invited to the next court levee and formally presented to you. At which time hell be decorated with the Order of Lord Havilbove, or some such meaningless honor."

A croaking sound of disbelief escaped from Prestimion. "Are you serious? You're actually asking me to permit that loathsome clown to set foot in the royal chambers? To let him come before the Confalume Throne?"

"I am always serious, Prestimion, in my way. Her lips now are sealed.

The Coronal and his friends were having a little adventure in Stee, and no one needs to know about it, and she will abide by her part of the agreement if you abide by yours. As you sit upon the throne they'll approach you reverently and make starbursts to you, and you'll smile and graciously acknowledge their homage, and that will be that. For the rest of his life Simbilon Khayf will glow with rapture over having been received at court."

"But how can I-"

"Listen to me, Prestimion. It's a shrewd arrangement on three counts. The first is that you want our prank in Stee covered up, and this will accomplish that. The second is that Simbilon Khayf has been lending money to half the princes of the Castle, and sooner or later one of them looking for easier terms or an extension of a loan is going to feel impelled to wangle a court invitation on his behalf, whichyou will grant, even though you think Simbilon Khayf's a despicable boor, because the request will come from somebody influential and useful like Fisiolo or Belditan or my cousin Dembitave. This way, at least, you give Simbilon Khayf the access to court that he's bound to get anyway, eventually, under terms that are advantageous to yourself."

Prestimion threw Septach Melayn a black look. But Septach Melayn's argument had some logic to it, he conceded grudgingly, repugnant though it all was to him. -"And the third count? You said there were three."

'Well, you want to see Varaile again, don't you? Here's your chance.

She might as well be a million miles away, living down there in Stee.

You may never visit Stee again in your life. But if she's right here in residence at the Castle as one of the royal ladies-in-waiting, a position which you could readily offer her while chatting with her after the throneroom reception-"

'Wait a moment," said Prestimion. "You move along a little too quickly, my friend. What makes you think I'm so eager to see her again?"

"But you do, isn't that so? You found her very attractive while we were in Stee."

"How would you know that?"

Septach Melayn laughed. "I'm not blind to such things, Prestimion.

Or deaf, either. You couldn't stop stating at her. The sound of your pupils dilating could be heard halfway across the room."

"This is exceedingly impertinent, Septach Melayn. She's a goodlooking woman, yes. That's obvious to anyone, even you. But for you to leap from there to the assumption that-that I'm---"

His voice trailed off into an incoherent sputter.

"Ah, Prestimion," said Septach Melayn, smiling warmly at him from across the room. "Prestimion, Prestimion, Prestimion!" The look in his eyes was sly and knowing, and his tone was certainly not that of subject to monarch, nor even that of a High Counsellor to the Coronal he served, but the gentle, intimate one used between two friends who had seen in many a midnight together.

Prestimion felt the light-hearted rebuke. There was no way he could refute it. For he had stared at Varaile, that time in Stee, with intense fascination . Had responded to her beauty with an undeniable quiver of approbation. Of desire, even.

Had dreamed of her, and more than once.

"We are getting into a region," said Prestimion after a considerable while, "where I'm uncertain of the meaning of my own feelings. I pray you, Septach Melayn, put this subject aside for now. What we need to discuss is this tale of Serithorn's that has to do with the whereabouts of Dantirya Sambail."

"Navigorn will give you the latest news of that.He's on his way over right now. -Youll permit Sirnbilon Khayf and his daughter to be received from the throne? I gave my word you would, you know."

"Yes, Septach Melayn! Yes. Yes. So be it. Where's Navigorn, now?"

'This is the district where he's most likely to be," said Navigorn. He 'had brought a map with him to the meeting, a hemiglobe of fine white porcelain overpainted in blue, yellow, pink, violet, dull green, and brown to indicate major geographical features. It was the sort of map that was equipped to display special information in bright patterns of light, and Navigorn brought that function to life now with a touch of his hand.

Points of red fire, connected by lines of brilliant green, sprang up on its face along the lower quadrant of the continent of Alhanroel. "Here's Bailemoona, south of the Labyrinth and very slightly to the east," he said, indicating the brightest of the red dots. "The sighting there was incontrovertible. Not only was someone who looks just like Dantirya Sambail seen in the vicinity of Serithorn's estate around the time of the game-poaching, but one of the Procurator's men told Serithorn's gamekeeper that the meat he was stealing was being taken for the benefit of Dantirya Sambail."

"There were plenty of incontrovertible sightings of him in the east country, too," Abrigant pointed out. "All over the place, as a matter of fact. They were all planted by the Procurator's sorcerers to fool us.

What makes you think that this isn't the same wizardy sort of stuff?"

Navigorn merely scowled. Prestimion looked in appeal toward Maundigand-Klimd, who said, "There's no question the Procurator was in the east-country for a time. I believe that he actually was seen by Villagers in the Vrambikat district. But most of the reports that drew us onward were illusions born of enchantments and dreams, not genuine eyewitness sightings. While we ran hither and thither after them, he was doubling back into central Alhanroel, leaving us to chase fantasies of his making all over the wilderness area. The Bailemoona report, I think, is different: authentic."

Abrigant looked unconvinced. 'This is assertion without demonstration . You simply tell us that one set of reports was illusion and this other one is real. But you offer no proof."

It was the left head of the Su-Suheris that had spoken before. Now the other head said calmly, "I have a certain gift of second sight. The Bailemoona reports have the ring of truth to me, and so I choose to give them credence. You are not obligated to agree."

Abrigant began to make some grumbling reply; but Navigorn said, with a sharp note of testiness in his voice, "May I continue?" He traced a line with his hand over the illuminated places on the map. "There have been additional sightings, some of them more trustworthy than oth ers-here, here, here, and here. You'll note that the general direction is southerly. That's the only sensible direction for him to go in anyway, because he's got nothing to his north or west except the desert that surrounds the Labyrinth, not a useful choice, and he wouldn't have anything to gain by going back into the east-country. But there's a clear line of march here that's taking him toward the southern coast."

"What cities are those?" Abrigant asked, indicating the red dots strung like glowing beads along the lines of green that stretched southward across the land.

"Ketheron up here," said Navigorn. "Then Arvyanda. This is Kajith Kabulon, where the rain never ceases falling. Once he makes his way through its jungles, he emerges on the southern coast, where he can get a ship heading toward Zimroel in any one of a hundred ports."

"Which are the main ones?" Gialaurys asked.

"Due south of the rain-forest country," Navigorn said, "we have Sippulgar, first Continuing on westward along the coast from there, he would come to Maximin, Karasat, Gunduba, Slail, and Porto Gambieristhis , this, this, this, and this." He spoke in a brusque, commanding tone.

He had prepared himself well for this meeting: a way of atoning, perhaps, for his negligence in allowing Dantirya Sambail to slip free in the first place. "Aside from Sippulgar, none of these has direct shipping connections with Ziniroel, but in any of them, or their neighbors farther along the north shore of the Stoienzar peninsula, he could book a passage on a coasting vessel that would carry him up to Stoien city, to Treymone, even to Alaisor. In any of those he'd be able to arrange for the voyage across to Piliplok, and from there upriver to Ni-moya."

"No, not so easily," said Gialaurys. "You may recall that I've placed all ports from Stoien to Alaisor under close surveillance. 'There's no way that anyone as unusual-looking as he is could slip past even the dullestwitted customs official. We'll extend the blockade eastward now as far as Sippulgar. Farther, even, if you want me to, Prestimion."

Prestimion, studying the map with care, made no immediate reply.

"Yes," he said, after a good deal of time had gone by. "I also think that we'd do well to set up military patrols along a fine beginning just north of Bailemoona and running westward as far as Stoien city."

"That is to say, along the route of the klorbigan fence," said Septach Melayn, and began to laugh. "How very appropriate. For that's what he is, isn't he? Ugly as a k1orbigan, and five times as dangerous!"

Prestimion and Abrigant began to laugh also. Gialaurys, looking vexed, said, I pray you, what are you talking about here?"

"Morbigans," said Prestimion, still chuckling, "are fat, lazy, clumsy burrowing animals of south-central Alhanroel with great pink noses and enormous hairy feet. They live on bark and tree roots, and in their native district they eat only certain wild species that are of no use to anyone but themselves. About a thousand years ago, though, they began migrating north into the areas where the farmers grow stajja and glein, and they discovered that they liked the taste of stajja tubers every bit as much as we do. Suddenly there were half a million klorbigans digging up the staja crop all over the middle of Alhanroel. The farmers couldn't kill the beasts fast enough. Whoever was Coronal at that time finally hit on the idea of a special kind of fence that runs right along the middle of the continent. It's just a couple of feet high, so any animal that's even slightly less sluggish than a klorbigan can step right over it, but it goes down six or seven feet underground, which apparently keeps them from burrowing beneath it."

"Lord Kybris, it was, who built it," SeptachMelayn said.

"Kybris, yes," said Prestimion. 'Well, we'll build a k1orbigan fence of our own, a patrol line without any breaks in it, so that if Dantirya Sambail decides to swing around once again and go north, he'll be picked up in-" He paused in mid-sentence. "Navigorn? Navigorn, what's the matter?"

Everyone stared. Big black-bearded Navigorn had turned away suddenly from his map and was doubled into a crouch, head bowed and arms clutching his middle, as if in some terrible racking spasm of pain.

After a moment he raised his head, and Prestimion saw that Navigorn's features were contorted into a horrifying grimace. Appalled, Prestimion signaled for Gialaurys and Septach Melayn, who were closest to him, to go to his aid. But Maundigand-Klimd acted first: the Su-Suheris lifted one hand and inclined his two heads toward each other, and something invisible passed between him and Navigorn, and within a moment the entire strange episode appeared to have ended. Navigorn was standing upright as though nothing at all had occurred, blinking the way one might after having dropped into an unexpected doze. His face was calm.

-"Did you say something, Prestimion?"

"A very singular expression came over you, and I asked you what the matter was. It seemed you were having a seizure of some sort."

"I was? A seizure?" Navigorn looked bewildered. "But I have no recollection of any such thing." Then he brightened. -"Ah! Then it must have happened again, without my knowing it!"

"Then this is something frequent with you?" asked Septach Melayn.

"It has occurred more than once," said Navigorn, looking a little sheepish now. Plainly he was abashed to be making this admission of weakness. But he plunged forward even so. "Along with great headaches, yes, that come and go suddenly, so that I think my skull win split open. And terrible dreams, very often. I have never had dreams of such a sort before."

"Will you tell us of them?" asked Prestimion gently.

It was a delicate thing, asking someone-a nobleman, a warrior at that-to reveal his dreams in such a group. But Navigorn said unhesitatingly , "I am on a battlefield, again and again, a great muddy field where men are dying on all sides and streams of blood run underfoot.

Who among us has ever fought a pitched battle, my lord? Who ever will, on this peaceful world? But I am there, armed and armored, laying about me with my sword, killing with every stroke. Ikill strangers and I kill friends too, my lord."

"You kill me, perhaps? Septach Melayn?"

"No, not you. I don't know who they are who fall to my sword. They are not people whose faces I can identify when I awaken and think back upon my dream. But as I lie dreaming I know that I am killing dear friends, and it sickens me, my lord. It sickens me." Navigorn shivered, though the room was very warm. "I tell you, lordship, this dream comes to me over and over, sometimes three nights running, so that by now I fear closing my eyes at all."

"How long has this been going on?" Prestimion asked.

Navigorn said, shrugging, "Days? Weeks? It's not something I can easily reckon up. -May I be excused for a few minutes?"

Prestimion nodded. Flushed now and glossy with sweat, Navigorn went from the room. Prestimion said quietly to Septach Melayn, "Did you hear? A battle in which he kills his friends. This is one more thing for which I bear the guilt."

"My lord, what guilt there is in this is Korsibar's," said Septach Melayn.

But Prestimion merely shook his head. Grim thoughts assailed him.

Yes, the battle itself where so many had died had been of Korsibar's making. Navigorn's baffling dreams, though, his spasms of agony, his inner confusion long after the event, all of that was part of the new inadness , and who was responsible for that if not Prestimion himself? This madness was something that his sorcerers had conjured upon the world at his behest, though he had not known it would happen.

Abrigant broke suddenly into Prestimion's meditation while they waited for Navigorn to return. "Brother, will you be going down yourself into the south-country to look for the Procurator, as you went east?"

Prestimion was startled at that, because the thoughthad only just been forming in his own mind. But they were of one flesh, he and Abrigant, and often of the same mind as well. He said with a grin, "I might very well do that. It will need discussion before the full Council, of course. But his majesty the Pontifex has requested my presence at the Labyrinth, and he is right to so request; and as long as I've gone that far south, I'll probably continue on toward Stoien in the hope of finding-"

"You speak of the full Council," said Septach Melayn. "Xhile Navigorn is out of the room, let me ask this, Prestimion: suppose some member of the Council-Serithorn, say, or my cousin Dembitavedemands from you outright to know why it is that Dantirya Sambail happens to be a fugitive whom you're hunting from one end of Alhanroel to another? What would you say to him, then?"

"Simply that he has given grave offense against the law and against the person of the Coronal."

"And you will offer no explanatory details of any sort?"

"I remind you, Septach Melayn, he is Coronal," said Gialaurys irascibly . "He can do as he pleases."

"Ah, no, good friend," said Septach Melayn. "He is king, yes, but not a tyrant absolute. He's subject to the decrees of the Pontifex as are we all, and he is accountable in some degree to the Council as well.

Decreeing a great potentate like Dantirya Sambail to be a criminal, and giving no reason for it to his own Council-not even a Coronal can do that."

"You know why he must," Gialaurys said.

"Yes. Because there is one great fact that has been withheld from all the world, excepting only the five of us who are here, and Teotas who is not." And Septach Melayn nodded toward Maundigand-Klimd and Abrigant, the two latecomers to the truth of what had happened that day at Tbegomar Edge. "But we get deeper and deeper into equivocation and evasion and downright lying the longer we clutch that secret to our bosoms."

"Let it be, Septach Melayn," Prestimion said. "I have no answers for these questions of yours, except to say that if the Council presses me too far on the subject of Dantirya Sambail's unspecified crimes, I will equivocate and evade. And, if necessary, He. But I like none of this any i better than you do. -And now Navigorn's coming back, so put an end to it."

Abrigant said, just as Navigorn was entering, "One further thing, brother: if you are going south into Aruachosia, I ask permission to accompany you part of the way."

tiOnly part?"

'There is the place called Skakkenoir, which we discussed not long ago, where one can recover useful metals from the stems and leaves of the plants that grow there. Ifs in the south, somewhere east of Aruachosia, perhaps even east of Vrist. While you hunt for Dantirya Sambail down there, I would go in search of Skakkenoir."

In some amusement Prestimion said, "I see that nothing will turn you from this quest. But the metal-bearing plants of Skakkenoir are a wild fantasy, Abrigant"

"Do we know that, brother? Allow me but to go and look."

Again Prestimion smiled. Abrigant was a relentless force. "Let's speak of this later, shall we, Abrigant? This is not the time. -Well, Navigorn, are you recovered? Here, have a bit of this wine. It'll soothe your soul. Now, as I was just about to say at the moment when Navigorn became ill: the Pontifex Confalume has reminded me that I am long overdue to call upon him in his new residence, and therefore-"

That evening, just the two of them dining alone in the Coronal's apartments , Septach Melayn said to Prestimion, "I see you wrestling with the matter of the great secret we keep, and I know how muchanguish it gives you. How are we going to deal with this thing, Prestimion?"

They sat face-to-face in Prestimion's private dining-alcove, a seven sided elevated room separated from its surroundings by an ascent of seven steps made of solid beams of black fire-oak, and bedecked by embroidered hangings a thousand years old, silks of many colors interwoven with gold and silver threads, that depicted the sports of hunting and hawking.

"If I had an answer for that," said Prestimion, "I would have given it to you this afternoon."

Septach Melayn stared for a time at the grilled kaspok in his plate, a rare delicacy--a white fish of the northern rivers, with meat as sweet as fresh berries-that he had scarcely tasted. He took a sip of his wine, and then drank again, not a sip this time. "You wanted to heal 1he world's pain, you told me, by wiping clean its memory of the war. To allow everyone a chance at a fresh start. Yes, all well and good. But this general madness that seems to have followed upon it-"

"I never anticipated that. I would never have called for the obliteration , if I could have seen that that would happen. You know that, Septach Melayn."

"Of course I do. Do you think I'm holding you at fault?"

"You seem to be."

"Not at all. Quite the opposite. 'The thinghas happened, and I see you taking personal responsibility for it, and I see the effect that it's having on you. Well, I say once again: what's done is done. Leave off expending energy in guilt, and deal only with the challenges that we now face.

You'll harm yourself otherwise. When Navigorn had that fit today-"

"Listen to me," Prestimion said. "I am responsible for the madness And for everything else that has befallen the world since I took the throne, and everything that will happen throughout my life. I am Coronal, and that means, above all else, the burden of responsibility for the world's destiny. Which I am prepared to bear."

Septach Melayn attempted to speak, but Prestimion would not have it "No. Hear me out. -Did you think I imagined that wearing the crown meant nothing more than grand processionals and splendid banquets and sitting here in the Castle's opulent rooms amidst ancient draperies and statuary? When I made the decision at lbegomar Edge to cleanse the world of all awarenees of the war, it was a hasty thing, and I see now that it may have been a poor choice. But it was my own decision for which I had valid reasons at the time and which still seems to me not altogether a misguided idea. Does that soundlike a statement of a man tormented by guilt?"

"You used the word yourself only today. Do you remember? This is one more thing for which I bear the guilt."'

"A passing fancy, nothing more."

"Not so passing. And not such a fancy, Prestimion. I see into your soul as readily as any magus. Each new report of the madness racks you with pain."

"And if it does, is it worth ruining this fine dinner to tell me so? Pain fades with time. This kaspok was brought by swift couriers from the shores of Sintalmond Bay for your delectation and mine, and you allow that dainty piece of fish to turn to old leather in your plate while you belabor me with all this. Eat, Septach Melayn. Drink. I assure you, I'm ready to live with whatever discomfort the consequences of my decision atThegomar Edge will bring me."

"All right," said Septach Melayn. "Permit me to come to my true point, then. If you must live in pain, why do you condemn yourself to bearing that pain alone?"

Prestimion looked at him without comprehension. "What are you talking about? How am I alone? I have you. I have Gialaurys. I have Maundigand-Klimd to offer me wisdom and consolation, both heads of him. I have my two sturdy brothers. I have-"