Navigorn turned his hands outward in a shrug. "I have no answers for any of this, gentlemen. I don't understand the least thing about it. All I know is that the Procurator's in the lockup, or soPrestimion assures me, and the Coronal has assigned me the job of making sure he stays there until he can be brought to judgment."

"Judgment for what?" Gonivaul cried.

"I don't have the slightest idea. I asked him what crime the Procurator was accused of, and he said he'd discuss that with me some other time."

'Well, what's your difficulty, then?" asked Serithorn crisply. "The Coronal has given you an assignment. You do as he says, that's all. He wants you to be the Procurator's jailer? Then be his jailer, Navigorn. "

"I hold no great love in my heart for Dantirya Sambail. He's little more than a wild beast, the Procurator. But even so-if he's being held without justification, purely at Prestimion's whim, am I not an accomplice to injustice if I help to keep him in prison?"

Gonivaul said, amazed, "Are you raising an issue of conscience, Navigorn?"

"You might call it that."

"You've taken an oath to serve the Coronal. The Coronal sees fit to place Dantirya Sambail under arrest, and asks you to enforce it. Do as he says, or else resign your office. Those are your choices, Navigorn.

Do you believe Prestimion's an evil man?"

"Of course not. And I have no desire to resign."

'Well, then, assume that Prestimion believes there's just cause for locking the Procurator away. Put twenty picked men on duty in the tunnels round the clock, or thirty, or however many you think are necessary , and have them keep watch, and make sure theyunderstand that if Dantirya Sambail manages to charm his way out of his cell, or to bully and bluster his way out, or to get out in any other way at all, they'll spend the rest of their lives regretting it."

"And if men of Ni-moya, the Procurator's men, that unsavory crew of murderers and thieves that Dantirya Sambail likes to keep about him, should come to me this afternoon," said Navigorn, "and demand to know where their master is and on what charges he's being held, and threaten to start an uproar from one end of the Castle to the other unless he's released immediately-?"

"Refer them to the Coronal," Gonivaul said. "He's the one who put Dantirya Sambail in jail, not you. If they want explanations, they can get them from Lord Prestimion."

"Dantirya Sambail a prisoner," said Serithorn in a wondering tone, as though speaking to the air around him. 'What a strange business! What an odd way to begin the new reign! -Are we supposed to keep this news a secret, Navigorn?"

'The Coronal told me nothing about that. 'The less said the better, I'd imagine."

"Yes. Yes. The less said the better."

"Indeed," said Gonivaul. "Best to say no more." And they all nodded vigorously.

"Serithorn! Gonivaul!" a hearty, raucous voice cried just then, from a couple of rows above. "Hello, Navigorn." It was Fisiolo, the Count of Stee. With him was a short, stocky, ruddy-faced man with dark, chilly eyes and a high forehead. A formidable mass of stiff silvery hair swept upward from that forehead to a prodigious and somewhat alarming height. "You know Simbilon Khayf, do you?" Fisiolo asked, with a glance toward his companion. "Richest man in Stee. Prestimion himself will be coming to him for loans before long, mark my words."

Simbilon Khayf favored Serithorn and Gonivaul and Navigorn with a quick, bland, beaming inclination of his head, studiedly modest. He seemed very much flattered to find himself in the presence of peers of such lofty position. Count Fisiolo, a square-faced, blunt-featured man who was never one to stand on ceremony, immediately beckoned Simbilon Khayf to follow him down into the box that the other three occupied, and he lost no time in doing so. But he gave the distinct impression of being someone who knew that he was far out of his depth.

"Have you heard?" Fisiolo said. "Prestimion's got Dantirya Sambail penned up in the tunnels! Has him hanging on the wallin heavy irons, so I'm told. Can you imagine such a thing? It's the talk of the Castle."

"We've only just learned of it," said Serithorn. "Well, if the story's true, no doubt the Coronal had good reason for putting him there."

"And what could that have been? Did nasty Dantirya Sambail say something dreadfully rude? Dantirya Sambail make the starburst sign the wrong way, maybe? Dantirya Sambail break wind at the coronation ceremony? -Come to think of it, was Dantirya Sambail even at the coronation ceremony?"

"I don't remember seeing him arrive at the Castle at all," Gonivaul said. "When we all came back here after Prankipin's funeral."

"Nor I," said Navigorn. "And I was here when the main caravan from the Labyrinth arrived. Dantirya Sambail wasn't with it."

"Yet we are reliably informed that he is here," said Serithorn. "Has been for some time, it seems. Long enough to offend Prestimion and be imprisoned, and yet nobody remembers seeing him arrive. This is very strange. Dantirya Sambail creates whirlwinds of noise about himself wherever he goes. How could he have come to the Castle, and none of us know it?"

"Strange, yes," said Gonivaul.

"Strange indeed," added Count Fisiolo. "But I confessthat I like the idea that Prestimion has managed somehow to put that repulsive loathsome monster in irons. Don't you?"

The Procurator of Ni-moya was much on Prestimion's mind, too, in the days that followed the coronation festival. But he was in no hurry to deal with his treacherous kinsman, who had betrayed him again and again in the twistings and turnings of the late civil war. Let him languish some some while longer in the dungeon into which he had been cast, Prestimion thought. It was necessary first to figure out some way of handling his case.

Beyond any question Dantirya Sambail was guilty of high treason.

More than anyone, except, perhaps, the Lady Thismet herself, he had spurred Korsibar on to his insane rebellion. The breaking of the dam on the Iyann had been his doing, too, a savage act that had caused unthinkable destruction. And in the battle of 'Megomar Edge he had lifted his hand against Prestimion in single combat, jeeringly offering to let the contest decide which of them would be the next Coronal and attacking Prestimion with axe and saber. Prestimion had prevailed in that encounter, though it was a close thing. But he had been unable to slay his defeated kinsman then and there on the battlefield, which was what he deserved. Instead Prestimion had had Dantirya Sambail and his malevolent henchman Mandralisca. hauled away as prisoners, to be brought to judgment at a later time.

But how, Prestimion wondered, could the Procurator be put on trial for crimes that nobody, not even the accused man himself, was able to remember? Who would stand forth as his accuser? What evidence could be adduced against him? 'This man was the chief fomenter of the civil war," yes. But what civil war? "It was his treasonous intention to seize the royal throne for himself once he had arranged the death of his puppet Korsibar." Korsibar? Who was Korsibar? "He is guilty of menacing the life of the legitimate Coronal on the field of battle with deadly weapons." What battle, where, when?

Prestimion had no answers to these questions. And there were, anyway , more pressing problems to deal with first, here in the early weeks of his reign.

The coronation guests, most of them, had scattered far and wide to their homes. The princes and dukes and earls and mayors had gone back to their own domains; the former Coronal who now was Confalume Pontifex had taken himself down the River Glayge on the long somber voyage that would deliver him to his new subterranean home in the Labyrinth; the archers and jousters and wrestlers and swordsmen who had come to show their skills at the coronation games were dispersed as well. The Princess 'Merissa had gone back to Muldemar House to pre pare for her journey to the Isle of Sleep and the tasks that awaited her there. The Castle was suddenly a much quieter place as Prestimion entered into the tasks of the new regime.

And there was so much to do. He had desired the throne and its duties with all his heart; but now that he had had his wish, he was awed by the boundless tasks he faced.

"I hardly know where to begin," he confessed, looking up wearily at Septach Melayn and Gialaurys.

The three of them were in the spacious room, inlaid everywhere with rare woods and strips of shining metal, that was the core of the Coronal's official suite. The throne-room was for the pomp and grandeur of state; these chambers were where the actual business of being Coronal took place.

Prestimion was seated at his splendid starburst-grained desk of red palisander, and long-legged Septach Melayn lounged elegantly beside the broad curving window overlooking the sweeping, airy depths of the abyss of space that bordered the Castle on this side of the Mount. The thick-bodied, heavy-sinewed Gialaurys sat hunched on a backless bench to Prestimion's left.

"It's very simple, lordship," said Gialaurys. "Begin at the beginning, and then continue to the next thing, and the next, and the one after that."

Coming from Septach Melayn, such advice would have been mockery- but big steadfast Gialaurys had no capacity for irony, and when he spoke, in that deep, slow, gritty rumble of a voice of his, the words flattened by the blunt accents of his native city of Piliplok, it was always with the greatest seriousness. Prestimion's mercurial little companion, AE"', the late and much lamented Duke Svor, had often mistaken Gialaurys's stolidity for stupidity. But Gialaurys was not stupid at all, just ponderously sincere.

Prestimion laughed amiably. 'Well said, Gialaurys! But which thing is the first one, and which the next? If only it were that easy to know."

'Well, Prestimion, let us make a list," said Septach Melayn. He ticked things off on his fingers. "One: appointing new court officials. On which we've made a fairly good start, I'd say. You've got yourself a new High Counsellor, thank you very much. And Gialaurys here will be a superb Grand Admiral, I'm sure. Et cetera et cetera. Two: repairing the prosperity of the districts that suffered damage during the war. Your brother Abrigant has some thoughts on that subject, incidentally, and wants to see you later in the day. Three-"

Septach Melayn hesitated. Gialaurys said at once, "Three: doing something about bringing Dantirya Sambail to trial."

"Letthat one go for awhile," Prestimion said. "Ifs a complicated matter."

"Four," went on Gialaurys, undaunted: "Interviewing everyone who fought on Korsibar's side in the late war, and making certain that no lingering disloyalties remain that could threaten the security of-"

"No," said Prestimion. "Strike that from the list. There never was any war, remember? How could anyone still be loyal to Korsibar, Gialaurys, when Korsibar never existed?"

Gialaurys offered a scowl and a grunt of displeasure. "Even so, Prestimion-"

"I tell you, there's nothing to worry about here. Most of Korsibar's lieutenants died at Thegomar Edge-Farholt, Mandrykarn, Venta, Farquanor, all that crowd-and I have no fear of the ones who survived.

Navigorn, for instance. Korsibar's best general, he was. But he begged forgiveness right on the battlefield, do you recall, when he came up to surrender just after Korsibar was killed? And sincerely so. He'll serve me well on the Council. Oliebbin and Serithorn and Gonivaul-they sold out to Korsibar, yes, but they don't remember doing it, and they can't do any harm now in any case. Duke Oljebbin will go to the Labyrinth and become High Spokesman for the Pontifex, and good riddance . Gonivaul gets sent into retirement in Bombifale. Serithorn's useful and amusing; I'll keep him around. Well, who else? Name me the names of people whom you suspect of being disloyal."

'Well-" Gialaurys began, but no names came to his lips.

"I'll tell you one thing, Prestimion," said Septach Melayn. "There may not be any Korsibar loyalists left around, but there isn't anybody at the Castle, other than the three of us, who's not seriously confused in some way by the witchery that you invoked at theend of the war. The war itself is wiped from everyone's mind, yes. But they all know that something big happened. They just don't know what it was. A lot of important men are dead, whole huge regions of Alhanroel are devastated , the Mavestoi Dam has mysteriously given way and flooded half a province, and yet everybody has been given to understand that there's been a smooth and uneventful transition from Confalume's reign to yours. It doesn't add up right, and they know it. 'They keep running up against that big throbbing blank place in their memories. It bothers them. I see mystified looks coming over people's faces right in the middle of a sentence, and they stop speaking and frown and press their hands against the sides of their heads as if they're groping in their "rids for something that isn't there. I've begun to wonder if it was such a good idea to remove the war from history like that, Prestimion."

'This was a subject Prestimion would have preferred not to discuss.

But there was no avoiding it now that Septach Melayn had wrestled it out into the open.

'The war was a terrible wound to the soul of the world," said Prestimion tautly. "If I had left it unexpunged, grievancesand counter grievances would have been popping up forever between Korsibar's fac- tion and mine. By having all memories of the war wiped clean, I gave everyone a chance to make a fresh start. To borrow one of your own favorite phrases, Septach Melayn, what's done is done. We have to live now with the consequences, and we will, and that's all there is to it."

Inwardly, though, he was not so sure. He had heard disquieting reports-everyone had-of strange outbreaks of mental imbalance here and there on the Mount, people attacking strangers without motive in the streets, or bursting into uncontrollable sobbing that went on for days and days, or throwing themselves into rivers or off cliffs.

Such tales had come in lately from Halanx and Minimool, and Haplior also, as though some whirling eddy of madness could be spiralling outward and downward from the Castle to the adjacent cities of the Mount.

Even as far down the Mount as Stee, it seemed, there had been a serious incident, a housemaid in some rich man's mansion who had leaped from a window and killed two people standing in the street below.

What reason was there, though, to fink any of this to the general amnesia that he had had his sorcerers induce at the end of the war?

Perhaps such things inevitably happened at the time of the changing of kings, especially after so long and happy a reign as that of Lord Confalume. People thought of Confalume as being a loving father to the entire world; they were unhappy, perhaps, to see him disappearing into the Labyrinth; and hence these disturbances. Perhaps.

Septach Melayn and Gialaurys were going on and on, extending into a host of new areas the already sufficient list of problems that were awaiting solutions: He needed, they told him, to integrate the various magical arts, which had come to take on such importance on Majipoor in Confalume's time, more fully into the fabric of society. 1his would require conversations with such folk as Gominik Halvor and Heszmon Gorse, who had remained at the Castle for just that purpose, said Gialaurys, rather than return to the wizards' capital at Triggoin.

He needed also to do something about a horde of synthetically created monsters that Korsibar had planned to use against him on the battlefield if the war had lasted just a little longer: according to Gialaurys, a number of them had escaped from their pens and were rampaging through some district north of Castle Mount.

Then, too, he ought to deal with some complaint that the Metamorphs of Zimroel had raised, having to do with the boundaries of the forest reservation on which they were required to live. The Shapeshifters were complaining of illegal encroachments on their domain by unscrupulous land-developers out of Ni-moya.

And also there was this to do, and this, and thatPrestimion was barely listening, now.

They were so insufferably sincere, these two, Septach Melayn in his elegant knightly way, Gialaurys in his own blunterstyle. Septach Melayn had always posed as one who never took anything seriously, but it was, Prestimion knew, only a pose; and as for Gialaurys, he was nothing else but stolid seriousness, a great massive sturdy lump of it.

Prestimion felt, more keenly than ever, the loss of the slippery little Duke Svor, who had had many faults but never the one of excessive sincerity . He had been the perfect mediator between the other two.

How idiotic it had been of Svor to step out onto the battlefield of 'Megomar Edge, when his proper place had been behind the scenes, scheming and plotting! Svor had not been any sort of warrior. What lunacy had driven him to take part in that murderous battle? And now he was gone. Where, Prestimion wondered, will I find a replacement for him?

And for Thismet, also. Especially, especially, Thismet. The biting pain of that loss would not leave him, would not so much as diminish with the passing weeks. Was it Thismet's death, he wondered, that had cast him into this miserable despondency?

Much work awaited him, yes. Too much, it sometimes seemed. Well, he would manage it somehow. Every Coronal in the long Est of his predecessors had faced the same sense of immense responsibilitiesthat had to be mastered, and each had shouldered those responsibilities and played his part, for good or ill, as history related-as history would one day relate also of him. And most of them had done the job reasonably well, all things considered.

But he could not shake off that mysterious, damnable sense of weariness , of hollowness, of letdown and dissatisfaction, that had poisoned his spirit since the first day of his reign. He had hoped that the taking up of his royal duties would cure him of that. It did not seem to be working out that way.

Very likely the tasks before him would seem far less immense, Prestimion thought, if only 'Thismet had lived. What a wonderful part ner of his labors she would have been! A Coronal's daughter herself, aware of the challenges of the kingship, and doubtless more than capable of handling many of them-Thismet would have been ever so much more capable of governing, he was sure, than her foolish brother: she would gladly have shared a great deal of his burden. But Thismet, too, was lost to him forever.

Still talking, Septach Melayn? And you, Gialaurys?

Prestimion toyed with the slim circlet of bright metal that lay before him on the desk. His "everyday" crown, as he liked to call it, to distinguish it from the exceedingly magnificent formal crown that Lord Confalume had had fashioned for himself, with those three immense many-faceted purple diniabas gleaming in its browband, and its finials of emeralds and rubies, and its inlaid chasings of seven different precious metals.

Confalume had loved to wear that crown; but Prestimion had worn it only once, in the first hours of his reign. He meant to reserve it henceforth for the very highest occasions of state. He found it mildly absurd even to have this little silver band around his head, hard though he had fought for the right to wear it. But he kept it constantly by him, all the same. He was Coronal of Majipoor, after all.

Coronal of Majipoor.

He had set his goal high, and after terrible struggle he had attained it.

As his two dearest friends droned on and on with their seemingly unending recitation of the tasks that awaited him and their interminable discussion of priorities and strategies, Prestin- ion was no longer even pretending to be paying attention. He knew what his tasks were: all of these, yes, and one that Septach Melayn and Gialauryshad not mentioned . For above all else he must make himself, here at the outset, the master of the officials and courtiers who were the real heart of the government : he must demonstrate his kingliness to them, he must show them that Lord Confalume, with the guidance of the Divine, had chosen the right man for the post.

Which meant that he must think like a Coronal, live like a Coronal, walk like a Coronal, breathe like a Coronal. That was the prime task; and all else would follow inevitably from the doing of it.

Very well, Prestimion: you are Coronal. Be Coronal.

The husk of him remained where it was, behind his desk, pretending to listen as Septach Melayn and Gialaurys earnestly laid out an agenda for the early months of his reign. But his soul flew upward and outward, into the cool open sky above the tip of Castle Mount, and journeyed toward the world, traveling in miraculous simultaneity to all directions of the compass.

He opened himself now to Majipoor and let himself feel its immensity flowing through him. Sent his mind roving outward across the vastness of the world that in these days just past had been entrusted to his care.

He must embrace that vastness fully, he knew, take it into himself, encompass it with his soul.

-The three great continents, sprawling, vast, many-citied Alhanroel and gigantic lush-forested Zimroel and the smaller continent of Suvrael, that sun-blasted land down in the torrid south. The giant surging rivers.

The countless species of trees and plants and beasts and birds that filled the world with such beauty and wonder. The blue-green expanse Of the Inner Sea with its roving herds of greatsea-dragons moving unhurriedly about their mysterious migrations, and the holy Isle of Sleep that lay in its center. The other ocean, the enormous unexplored Great Sea that stretched across the unknown farther hemisphere of the world.

-The marvelous cities, the fifty great ones of the Mount and the uncountable multitude beyond, Sippulgar and Sefarad and Alaisor and wizardly Triggoin, Ydkil and Mai and Kimoise, Pivrarch and Lontano, Da and Demigon Glade, and on and on, across to the far shore of the Inner Sea and the distant continent of Zimroel with its multiplicity of ever-burgeoning megalopolises, Ni-moya, Narabal, Til-omon, Pidruid, Dulorn, Sempemond, and all the rest.

-The billions and billions of people, not only the humans but those of the other races, Vroons and Skandars, Su-Suheris and Hjorts and the humble slow-witted Liimen, and also the mysterious shape-shifting Metamorphs, whose world this had been in its entirety until it was taken from them so many thousands of years ago.

All of it now placed in his hands.

His.

His.

The hands of Prestimion of Muldemar, yes: who now was Coronal of Majipoor.

Suddenly Prestimion found himself feverishly yearning to go forth not merely in a vision but in the flesh, and explore this world that had been given into his charge. To see it all; to be everywhere at once, drinking in the infinite wonders of Majipoor. Out of the pain and loneh ness of his strange new life as Coronal came, in one great turbulent rush, the passionate desire to visit the lands from which those coronation gifts had come. To repay the givers, in a sense, with the gift of himself.

A king must know his kingdom at first hand. Until the time of the civil war, when he had trekked back and forth across Alhanroel from one battlefield to another, his life had been centered almost entirely on Castle Mount, and at the Castle itself. He had been to some of the Fifty Cities, of course; and there had been the one journey to the eastern coast of Zimroel when he was hardly out of boyhood, that time when he had met and fallen into friendship with Gialaurys, at Piliplok, but otherwise he had seen little of the world.

The war, though, had given Prestimion an appetite for traveling. It had taken him up and down the heartland of Alhanroel, to cities and places he had never expected to see: he had beheld theastonishing might of the Gulikap Fountain, that uncheckable spume of pure energy, and had crossed the forbidding spine of the Trikkala Mountains into the lovely agricultural zones on the other side, and had impelled himself across the grim dread desert of the Valmambra to reach the remote city of the wizards, Triggoin, far in the north. And yet he had seen only a tiny sliver of the magnificence that was Majipoor.

He longed, abruptly, to experience more. He had not realized, until this moment, how powerful that longing was. The desire seized him and took full possession of him. How much longer could he remain holed up in isolated majesty in the luxurious confines of the Castle, drearily passing one day after another in such matters as interviewing potential members of the Council and reviewing the legislative program that he had been handed by Lord Confalume's administration, when the whole glorious world beyond these walls beckoned to him, urging him to go forth into it? If he could not have Thismet, well, he would have Majipoor itself to console him for the loss. To see all that it held, to touch, to taste, to smell. To drink deep; to devour. To present himself to his subjects, saying, Look, see, here I am before you,Prestimion your king!

"Enough," he said suddenly, glancing up and interrupting Septach Melayn in full spate. "If you will, my friends, spare me the rest of it for now."

Septach Melayn peered down at him from his great height. "Are you all right, Prestimion? You look very strange, suddenly."

"Strange?"

"Fense. Strained."

Indifferently Prestimion said, "I've slept badly these few nights past."

"That comes of sleeping alone, my lord," said Septach Melayn, with a wink and a little sniggering leer.

"No doubt that's so," said Prestimion icily. "Another problem to be solved, at another time." He allowed Septach Melayn to see plainly that he was not amused. 'Then he said, after a long chilly moment of silence, "The true problem, Septach Melayn, is that I feel a great restlessness churning within me. I've felt it since the hour this crown first touched MY forehead. The Castle has begun to seem like a prison to me."

Septach Melayn and Gialaurys exchanged troubled glances.