Tales of Majipoor Read online

  Simmilgord felt dazed by it all. A sensation as of a great swelling chord of music came soaring up from the core of his soul, music that he had heard before, the great song of Majipoor that had resounded in his heart now and again throughout all his days. Since his boyhood he had lived with the deeds of the Pontifex Dvorn alive in his mind, the dawn of his campaign to bring the scattered cities of Majipoor together into a single realm, the first gathering of support at Kesmakuran, the arduous march to Stangard Falls, the proclamation of a royal government, the founding of the Pontificate and the struggle to win worldwide acceptance. Certainly it was the great epic of the world’s history. But nearly all that Simmilgord knew of it came from Aithin Furvain’s poem. Until this moment he had feared that every detail of the story, so far as anyone could say with certainty, might merely be a work of imaginative recreation.

  Now, though, here in his hands, was the evidence that Furvain had told the true story. It was impossible to resist the desire to accept these documents as authentic. As he scanned through them, running his fingers over them, caressing them almost in a loving way, the whole stupendous sweep of Majipoor’s history came pouring in on him like the invincible flow of a river in full spate. Simmilgord had not known any such sensations since his boyhood in the Vale of Gloyn, when he had felt the first stirrings of that hunger to comprehend this vast world that had eventually set him on the path he followed now. The documents had to be real. No one, not even for the sake of enhancing provincial pride, could have gone to the trouble of forging all this. Unimportant little Kesmakuran did indeed seem to be the place from which Dvorn’s unification movement had sprung; and, no matter how pompous Prasilet Sungavon’s manner might be, it was starting to be hard to reject the conclusion that the tomb of which he was the custodian was the actual burial-place of the first Pontifex.

  Lutiel, meanwhile, had been making significant progress toward the same conclusion. He had recruited a crew of diggers from the local farms, three boys and two girls, and had given them a quick course in the technique of archaeological excavation, and – while Prasilet Sungavon stood by, watching somewhat uneasily – had begun to push the zone of exploration well beyond the tomb-chamber.

  As Lutiel had begun to suspect almost from the first day, there was more to the underground structure than the entryway and the burial chamber. Some probing on the far side of that chamber revealed that its rough-hewn wall was even more irregular than usual in certain places, and when he lifted away a little of the masonry in those places he discovered that behind the jumbled stones lay circular openings, probably plugged long ago by rockfalls. And behind those were four additional passageways leading off at sharp angles from the main entry tunnel. Succeeding days of excavation demonstrated that at one time the tomb-chamber had been at the center of a cluster of such tunnels, as though in ancient times solemn ceremonial processions had come to it from various directions.

  Prasilet Sungavon, who made a point of being present at each day’s work as if he feared that Lutiel might damage the precious tomb in some way, displayed mixed feelings as these discoveries proceeded. Plainly he was displeased as his own inadequacies as an archaeologist were made manifest: that he had never thought of digging deeper in at the site himself could only be an embarrassment to him. But his yearning for antiquarian knowledge was genuine enough, however inadequate his scientific skills might be, and he showed real excitement as Lutiel pushed his various excavations farther and farther.

  Especially when more tablets turned up in these outer passages: commemorative plaques that showed an evolution in Majipoori script that had to cover several thousand years, culminating in a perfectly legible one declaring that the prodigious Stiamot, conqueror of the aboriginal Metamorphs, had come here on pilgrimage after his succession to the Pontificate and had performed a ceremony of thanksgiving at the tomb of his revered predecessor Dvorn.

  Here was proof absolute of the authenticity of the site. That night Mayor Kyvole Gannivad gave a celebratory feast, and the golden wine of Alaisor flowed so freely that both Simmigord and Lutiel found it necessary to declare a holiday from their labors on the next day.

  That was the first surprise: the confirmation that this was, in fact, the veritable tomb of Dvorn.

  The second surprise, which came a few weeks later, was much less pleasant. They were both back at work, Simmilgord ploughing through a mountain of dusty documents, Lutiel meticulously extending his dig, when messengers came to each of them to say that the mayor wished to see them at his office immediately.

  Simmilgord, arriving first, waited fifteen minutes in the office vestibule for Lutiel to get there, and ten fretful minutes more before Kyvole Gannivad appeared. The round little man came bouncing out, flushed with excitement, beckoning with both hands. “Come! Come! We have a visitor, a most important visitor!”

  The huge figure of a Skandar waited within, practically filling the mayoral office: a ponderous bulky being, at least eight and a half feet tall, with four powerful arms and a thick shaggy pelt. Kyvole Hannivad said grandiloquently, “My friends, it is my great pleasure to introduce you to—”

  But the Skandar needed no introduction. Simmigord knew him instantly by the two bizarre stripes of orange fur that slanted diagonally like barbaric ornaments through his dense gray-blue facial pelt, and by the fiery intensity of his eyes. This could only be Hawid Zakayil, the forceful and autocratic Superintendent of Antiquities of Alhanroel, a man who was ex officio director of half the museums of the continent, who had positioned himself as the supreme authority on all questions having to do with the past of Majipoor, who spent his days in perpetual motion, moving from one major site to another, taking command of anything that might be going on there, personally announcing all major discoveries, putting his name to innumerable books and essays that – so it was widely thought – were primarily the work of other people. He was a force of nature, a living hurricane, dynamic and irresistible. He had come once to the University when Simmilgord was there, to address the senior convocation, and the event was nothing that Simmilgord could ever forget.

  It was only to be expected, Simmilgord thought dolefully, that the ubiquitous and omnipotent Hawid Zakayil would turn up here sooner or later. Confirmation of the authenticity of the tomb of Dvorn? Discovery of a Stiamot inscription? And of documents, or at least copies of documents, that cast new light on pivotal moments in the career of the first Pontifex? How, in the light of all of that, could he have stayed away? And what would happen now to the two young scholars who had made these discoveries?

  Simmilgord, looking quickly toward Lutiel, had no difficulty reading the message that his friend’s eyes conveyed.

  We are lost, Lutiel was thinking. We are doomed.

  Simmilgord felt very much the same way.

  But for the moment all was jubilation and good cheer, at least outwardly. The towering Skandar reached out, taking both of Simmilgord’s hands in his two left ones and Lutiel’s in the right pair, and told them in booming tones how proud he was of the things they had achieved. “I met you both, you know, in Sisivondal, your graduation week, and I knew even then that you were destined for great things. As I told you at the time. Surely you remember!”

  Surely Simmilgord did not. He had seen Hawid Zakayil then, yes, but only at a distance, simply as a member of the audience during that lengthy and vociferous harangue. Not a single word had passed between them on that occasion or at any time since. But he was not about to contradict the great man about that, or, indeed, about anything else.

  They spoke with him for a long while about the work they had been doing in Kesmakuran. Then, of course, there had to be an inspection of Simmilgord’s collection of archival material, and of the tablets that Lutiel had found in the newly opened tunnels, and then a tour of the tunnels themselves. At some point in the afternoon Prasilet Sungavon interpolated himself into the group, introduced himself effusively to Hawid Zakayil, and let the Skandar know, without saying so in quite those words, that Simmilgord and Lu
tiel would not have accomplished a thing here without his own thoughtful guidance. “You have done well,” the Superintendent of Antiquities told him, and the Hjort beamed a great Hjortish grin of self-satisfaction. Simmilgord and Lutiel maintained a diplomatic silence.

  Hawid Zakayil was so big that the tour of the tunnels was something of a challenge, and at one ticklish moment it seemed as if he were going to become stuck in the tightest of the passageways. But he extricated himself with the skill of one who was accustomed to life on a world where nearly everything was constructed for the benefit of much smaller beings. He moved quickly from place to place within the site, sniffing at the sarcophagus, staring into the niches where the stone tablets had been found, pushing at the chamber walls as though testing their solidity. “Wonderful,” he said. “Marvelous. How thrilling it is to realize that we stand right at the birthplace of the history of Majipoor!”

  Simmilgord thought he heard Lutiel snicker. This was no birthplace, for one thing: it was a tomb. And Simmilgord knew that Hawid Zakayil’s appropriation to himself of the entire past of Majipoor had always bothered Lutiel. He was just a Skandar, after all, Lutiel had often said: a latecomer to the planet, like the Hjorts and Ghayrogs and all the other non-human races. Lutiel believed that the history of Majipoor was the history of the human settlement of the planet. Simmilgord had often tried to dispute that point. Majipoor had been here for millions of years before the arrival of the first intruders from space, and probably would survive their extinction as well. “We are all latecomers here, if you look at things from the point of view of the Metamorphs,” he would say. “So what if the humans got here before the Skandars and the Hjorts? We all came from somewhere else. And all of us working together have made the place we call Majipoor what it is.” But there was no appeasing Lutiel on that issue, and Simmilgord, after a time, ceased to debate it with him.

  The real area of concern was that to have the Superintendent of Antiquities come storming noisily into town put everything in doubt. What would happen next, Simmilgord wondered, to their project here? The best-case scenario was that Hawid Zakayil would simply prowl around here for a few days, make a few comments and suggestions, give the work his seal of approval, and go zooming off to his next place of inspection, leaving them in peace to continue the work already begun.

  But that was too optimistic an outcome. Very quickly it became apparent that something much worse was going to unfold.

  Two days after the meeting with Hawid Zakayil, Simmilgord was at work in the municipal archives when Lutiel came bursting in unexpectedly, looking wild-eyed and flushed. “The most amazing – you have to see – you can’t imagine – oh, come, Simmilgord, come with me, come! To the tomb! Hurry!”

  Simmilgord had never seen his calm, sober-minded friend looking so flustered. There was no choice but to go with him at once, and off they went, pell-mell across town to the excavation site. With Lutiel in the lead, moving so quickly that Simmilgord could barely keep up with him, they scurried down the staircase, through the passage to the tomb-chamber, beyond it into the newly excavated tunnels, and then made a sudden left turn into a part of the dig that Simmigord had never seen before. Lutiel flashed his torch about frenziedly from one wall to the other.

  “We broke through into this about an hour ago. Look at it! Look at it!”

  Both sides of the new tunnel were covered with murals – most of them faded with age, in some places barely visible, mere ghosts of what once had been painted there, but in other sections still relatively fresh and bright, the colors still apparent. At the far end, where the passage widened into a kind of apse, Simmilgord could see the giant image of a seated man in what must have been robes of great magnificence, occupying the entire wall from floor to ceiling, one hand raised in a gesture of benediction, the other resting on his knee, lying there casually but, even so, in a regal manner. Though the whole upper part of the figure’s face was gone, its smile remained, a smile of such warmth and godlike benevolence that this could only be meant as a representation of a great monarch, and what other monarch could it be than Dvorn?

  To either side of that great throned figure were other paintings, a long series of them, badly damaged in their upper sections and the colors everywhere weakened by the inroads of time. But Simmilgord, staring in awe from one to the next, found it all too easy to suggest meanings for the scenes he saw: this must be the gathering at Kesmakuran where Dvorn had called upon the people of Alhanroel to unite behind his banner, and this his coronation as Pontifex at Stangard Falls on the river Glayge, at the foot of Castle Mount, and this one, where a lesser but still imposing figure was depicted beside him, surely showed Dvorn raising his colleague Barhold to the newly devised rank of Coronal Lord. And so on and on for twenty yards or more, though the paintings closest to the point where Lutiel had entered the gallery were reduced to the merest spectral outlines. Simmilgord, moving carefully from one to the next, beheld images of vertically mounted wheels, like the waterwheels that might power a mill, and long processions of blurred and almost undiscernible figures, perhaps celebrants in some forgotten holy rite, and a series of wreath-like decorations inscribed with lettering in the same antique script as on the tablets that Prasilet Sungavon had found.

  “The oldest paintings in the world,” Lutiel said softly. “Scenes from the life of the Pontifex Dvorn.”

  “Yes.” It was just a husky whisper: Simmilgord was barely able to get the syllable out. “Yes. Yes. Yes!” To his astonishment he found himself fighting back tears. “A marvelous discovery, Lutiel.” And indeed it was. Even in that moment of jubilation, though, he felt a sudden sense of dread. This find was too marvelous. They were never going to get rid of Hawid Zakayil, now.

  He could not bring himself to voice the fears that came rushing in upon him. But Lutiel did.

  “And now to show it to the Skandar,” he said. “Who will steal it from us.”

  “We will seal this chamber at once,” Hawid Zakayil announced briskly, when he had completed his inspection of the new gallery two hours later. “This is the most amazing discovery in my entire career, and we must take no risks with it, none whatsoever. Exposure to the outside atmosphere could very well destroy these paintings in a matter of days. Therefore no one is to enter without permission from me, and I mean no one, until we complete our plan for preservation of the murals.”

  It was not hard for Simmilgord to imagine the things that were going through Lutiel Vengifrons’ mind, but he could not bear to look at his friend’s face just now. The swiftness with which the Superintendent of Antiquities had taken possession of the find was breathtaking. The most amazing discovery in his entire career, yes! And no one to enter the site, not even Lutiel, without permission from him. It was his site, now. His discovery. His amazing discovery.

  Quite predictably the Superintendent of Antiquities made it clear that he intended to stay right here in Kesmakuran and take personal charge of the work. And over the next few days, without actually saying so explicitly, he let it be known to Mayor Kyvole Gannivad, to the Hjort Prasilet Sungavon, and, lastly, to Simmigord and Lutiel themselves, that this site was too important to be left in the hands of amateurs or novices. And – quite explicitly, this time – he revealed that he had some truly marvelous ideas for capitalizing on the tomb’s tremendous historical significance.

  “This is humiliating, Simmilgord,” Lutiel said, when at last they were alone that evening. “I’m going to resign, and so should you.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t you see? He’s putting the whole thing in his pocket and reducing us to flunkeys. I’ll have to beg to be allowed to go into the tomb. He’ll bring his own people in to do the preservation work, and they’ll want to continue the dig without me. Whatever you find in the archives will have to be turned over to him, and he’ll claim credit for having found it. We’ll be lucky even to have our names on the paper when he publishes the find.”

  Simmilgord shook his head. “You’re taking this much too seriousl
y. He’s behaving exactly as he always behaves when somebody finds an exciting new site, yes, but in a few weeks he’ll lose interest and move on. Something big will turn up on the far side of Castle Mount or maybe even down in Suvrael and off he’ll go to muscle in on it. Or there’ll be a new museum to dedicate at the back end of Zimroel and he’ll head over there for six or seven months. He’ll keep his finger in our work here, sure. But he can’t be everywhere at once, and sooner or later you’ll be back in charge of the dig.”

  “This is very naive of you.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you’re actually going to remain here, Simmilgord?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. And so should you.”

  “And be pushed aside – cheated, abused—”

  “I tell you it won’t be like that. Please, Lutiel. Please.”

  It took some work, but finally, glumly, Lutiel agreed to stay on for a while. The clinching argument was that for him to resign in high dudgeon now would destroy his career: Hawid Zakayil would understand instantly why he was leaving, no matter what pretext he gave, and would take mortal offense, and no young archaeologist who offended the Superintendent of Antiquities was ever going to do archaeological work on Majipoor again. He might just as well start taking a course in accounting or bookkeeping.