Sorcerers of Majipoor m-4 Read online

  Once more they rode toward each other. Gialaurys shook his head as if to free it from a shrouding of mist. He barely managed to parry Gebel Thibek’s thrust, which was heading for his heart: he offered none of his own.

  Those lances came to sharp points. A blow in the wrong place, or one not properly parried, could be fatal. And Gialaurys seemed suddenly incapable of defending himself. His condition was worsening steadily: he had no grip on himself. Another moment and he would topple to the ground without even being struck, from the way things looked.

  Prestimion began to rise. “This has to be stopped,” he said, looking across to Navigorn, who was Master of the Games today, and signaling for his attention. “Gialaurys is in no shape for this match.” But Navigorn was looking the other way.

  Duke Svor’s hand caught Prestimion’s wrist.

  “Look there,” he said.

  Septach Melayn, in three quick leaps, had descended from the grandstand and was down on the field, roaring and staggering about like a man who has drunk six flasks of wine in five minutes and hopes to find a seventh. His sword was out; he was waving it wildly about. The crowd began to yell.

  At the sight of that bare steel shaft, Gialaurys’s mount balked and reared, all but throwing him. His lance fell from his grasp but he hung on somehow to the mount’s heavy mane as the high-strung animal ran frantically to and fro. Gebel Thibek’s more stolid steed held its ground. The magus called out angrily to Septach Melayn to quit the field, to which Septach Melayn replied with coarse drunken insults and a lunging thrust of his sword through the empty air. Gebel Thibek responded with a powerful jab of his lance, one plainly meant not to warn but to kill. If Septach Melayn had not leaped aside with the utmost agility, he would have been skewered through the breast.

  “What?” Septach Melayn cried, thick-voiced, still capering like one who has lost his senses. “Is this a demon here atop this mount? Yes! Yes, a demon!” He snatched up Gialaurys’s fallen lance and swung it in a wide lateral circle, catching Gebel Thibek under one arm and knocking him to the ground. “A demon!” Septach Melayn cried again. “It must be exorcised!” The sorcerer, rising uncertainly to his feet, backed away from him, making signs and incantations against him. But Septach Melayn, grinning like a madman, came running forward in quick hopping skips and without breaking stride put his sword through Gebel Thibek’s middle so that it jutted forth six inches out of his back.

  A great shout of amazement and horror went up. Guardsmen began to run out on the field. Septach Melayn, reeling back and still moving spraddle-legged like a drunkard, looked down wide-eyed at his sword and his sword-arm as though they had struck Gebel Thibek down of their own accord. He made his way through the confusion on the field and, reaching the side of the grandstand, cried out, looking up at Korsibar, “My lord! My lord, it was an accident—forgive me, my lord, I thought this man was some demon putting an enchantment on my friend—”

  Then Prestimion was on the field beside him, with his arm thrown over Septach Melayn’s shoulders, leading him off. “The filthy wizard!” Septach Melayn muttered, speaking into Prestimion’s ear alone, and no drunkenness in his tone now. “Another moment and he’d have put that weapon of his right through Gialaurys, as I did with him!”

  “Come. Hurry,” Prestimion said.

  And he too looked up at Korsibar, whose face was stern and grim and black with anger. Prestimion managed to don an expression of shock and anguish. “My lord—how terrible this is—he’s had far too much wine, his mind is altogether in a fog. He had no idea what he was doing. All he saw was his friend in great peril, or so it seemed to him.”

  “Forgive me!” Septach Melayn moaned again, in the most piteous quavering voice that anyone had ever heard from him. “I beg you, lord, forgive me! Forgive!”

  5

  Afterward, in Prestimion’s apartments, Gialaurys said furiously, “By the Lady, I should have killed him straightaway at that first pass, instead of politely touching lances with him. But I was not trained to do such slaughter in the name of sport, and how was I to know what scheme he had in mind? Though I learned soon enough, by the Lady! This was the wrestling-match of the Labyrinth all over again, only with a deadlier weapon than Farholt’s arms and hands, this time. When I approached him at the second pass, he was already whispering his spells at me. And then I thought, it is all over with me, my mind is clouding over and my strength is gone, I will perish here in front of everyone and they all will think I had forgotten all my skills since last I jousted. I would have killed him, if I could. But I was too much befogged by him.”

  He was trembling and white-faced with anger. Prestimion handed him a flask of wine, and he drained it without bothering to pour any into a drinking-bowl, and tossed it aside.

  Svor said, “To go up against a magus in a contest like that was madness. I should have warned you to refuse.”

  “No one ever listens to your warnings, Svor,” said Septach Melayn lightly. “It is your fate. But at least that one will cast no spells on us tomorrow.”

  “This was all of it madness,” Prestimion said darkly. “The accepting of the challenge and the killing of the magus both. You’re lucky not to be in the Castle dungeon tonight, Septach Melayn.”

  “He gave me provocation, after all. Everyone saw that. He aimed the lance at me to kill, when I was only a silly drunkard disrupting the match. Who could deny it was self-defense when I struck him down?”

  “You went out there intending to kill him,” Prestimion said.

  “Yes. So I did. But he was there to kill Gialaurys. Would you have preferred that he had?”

  Prestimion opened his mouth to reply, but no words came, and he closed it again.

  Gialaurys said, “It would surely have been my death. He was chanting words at me, binding me in the grip of demons—I could barely see, it was all I could do to stay atop my mount—” He reached out for another flask of wine. “I knew I would die. But I couldn’t make myself run away. I felt no fear, only anger at having been gulled this way. It was their plan to kill me. If Septach Melayn hadn’t gone out to interfere, I’d be with the Source tonight.”

  “Whose plan?” asked Prestimion sharply. “Korsibar’s, you think?”

  Gialaurys shook his head. “You keep telling us he’s an honorable man. Steals the throne, yes, but a man of honor all the same. Well, then, he loves us all: let us say that. It was Sanibak-Thastimoon who sent the magus against me. And next, I vow, he’ll be trying his witchcraft against you.”

  “Ah, just let him try!” Prestimion said, laughing.

  “He will! Do you see how the Castle is full of sorcerers for these games? The smell of incense-smoke is everywhere, and wherever you turn someone’s chanting in a corridor. Did you not see that as we were coming in? He’s got half of Confalume’s mages still on his payroll, and all of his own, and new ones we’ve never seen before. This is to be a reign of wizardry, Prestimion! This vast host of sorcerers is here at the Castle to frighten and intimidate anyone who might say Korsibar’s not the legal king: and this was the first blow against the four of us, who are Korsibar’s known enemies. The next will be aimed at you, my friend. Let us get ourselves from here at once.”

  “Go, then,” Prestimion said. “I won’t keep you, not any of you. You need not stay. But I must.”

  “While spells are woven against your life?”

  “Spells! What do I care about spells?” Prestimion cried. “Oh, Gialaurys, Gialaurys, must I coddle your foolishness forever? It’s all mere silly noise, these incantations. There are no demons! There is no witchcraft!”

  “And what happened to me on the jousting field, then? What was that, a sudden sunstroke?”

  “There’s such a thing as hypnotic illusion,” said Prestimion, “and that was what the magus worked against you. You were half ready to believe any words of his anyway: more than half ready. So he used your own credulity against you, and hypnotized you to make you feel feeble and confused.”

  Gialaurys butted his clenc
hed fists together and let his breath run from him in a sigh of frustration. “Call it hypnosis, call it magic—ah, what difference do the words make? He took control of my mind. As was their plan. Oh, Prestimion, you are so clever, and I am so dim of wit, or so Septach Melayn likes to tell me, and yet everything seems clear to me that you and he refuse to see. There is magic in this world, and it works, and you must believe that or die!”

  “Must I, now?” said Prestimion calmly. “We have fought this battle before, you and I.”

  Gialaurys closed his eyes and drew a deep breath or two. Then he said, more evenly, “Let it pass. Believe or not, as the spirit impels you. But grant me at least that we are in danger here. Why was Septach Melayn not arrested for killing a man on the jousting field? Not because it was in self-defense, but because Korsibar knew that he had sent the magus out there to murder me, and feared that in any investigation it would come out! I say again, we should quit this place tonight.”

  “We are in no danger so long as we keep our wits about us,” said Prestimion stubbornly. “How can I leave here on the very first day of my arrival? The thing is not possible. I owe Korsibar the courtesy of attending these events: he is Coronal, however he came by it, and this is his coronation time, and I am a prince of his nobility. But I tell you once more: you need not stay, none of you.” He looked at each of them close and hard. “Go, if you like. Go.”

  “Say it once more and there’ll be a brawl,” said Septach Melayn. “We came here with you. We’ll stay with you. At least I will, for one.—Gialaurys?”

  “It would be wisest to go, I think. But I will stay, if you and Prestimion do.”

  “And you, Svor?” Septach Melayn demanded.

  The small man ran his hand carefully through the close-knit curls of his beard. “This place is unsafe for us, as I told you before we ever came, and as today’s events confirm. But we were none of us born to live forever. I’ll stay also, Prestimion, though not with much joy in the thought.”

  * * *

  The Lady Thismet and Thalnap Zelifor walked together on the terrace outside her rooms, where a golden view of the slopes below the Castle opened out magnificently to the east. The sky was mottled and cloud-strewn this day as the long afternoon gradually descended toward night, and dull thunder boomed faintly somewhere downslope, where a storm must be going on above one of the Guardian Cities, or even farther below. Here, though, the air was mild and untroubled. Thismet strolled slowly, adjusting her pace to that of the diminutive Vroon, and now and again glanced down at the small creature as though he were some amusing pet trailing along at her ankles. But she knew he was something quite other than that.

  She had told him everything. Now she depended on him to show her the proper path to follow. This hideous little alien thing no heavier than a mass of feathers, so tiny it could almost stand on the palm of her hand, with its horde of writhing little limbs and its ugly head and fierce little curving beak and those two huge yellow eyes whose pupils were eerie horizontal black stripes: her mentor now, her only savior.

  “You’ve looked at the horoscope I had from Sanibak-Thastimoon?” she asked.

  “Not only looked at it, but studied it top and bottom and sideways. Not only did that, but cast the runes for you myself, from the numbers you gave me.”

  “And?”

  ’Total confirmation. He is a superb craftsman, is Sanibak-Thastimoon. There’s no one finer exists anywhere, dealing in such arts as these.”

  “Would that I still trusted him. I trusted him once, more than anyone in the world. But that was folly. He was my brother’s minion always, and gave me only such scraps from Korsibar’s table as would not be missed, out of courtesy to me perhaps, but never out of any sort of loyalty. You are the only one I trust, Thalnap Zelifor. You and the Lady Melithyrrh.” Her eyes grew very bright. “Total confirmation, is it? He said a great destiny awaited me. And you found the same?”

  “Look you,” he said. He flung half a dozen of his myriad tentacles upward to encircle his head, and swept them swiftly about in a pattern too intricate for her eye to follow; and suddenly, somehow, there sprang into being in the air before them a brilliant show of colored light, intense pulsing greens and deep throbbing violets and sharp spearing reds, with dazzling lines of black and yellow cutting across this background tapestry like comets lancing through the firmament. It could have been a map of some undiscovered continent. “Here is your chart, lady, and your line is the yellow. And this is Lord Korsibar’s destiny-line, the black one. See, see, how they rise from the same point, your line and his: for you and he were womb-mates, and that links you forever in these findings. Here, you see, in this region where the lines twist and turn around each other and go both of them only in a straight path, this is your happy childhood and his, the long sweet idle times at the Castle, the pampered days of the indolent young prince and princess—pardon me for the ugly word, milady, but it is so, there is no getting about that, and I must be utterly honest with you or what value is there to my service? Indolent is what you were. Begging your forgiveness for saying so.”

  “Spare me politeness,” said Thismet. “I prefer truth.” Her eyes were already racing ahead, seeking to know the trajectory of those yellow and black lines, but the pattern was confusing to her: it needed a magus to speak it, she realized.

  “Now follow here,” he said. “And here, and here, and here. Your lines, which have been flat, now begin to rise. The Pontifex sickens. Your father must ascend to the senior throne. Prestimion will be Coronal. But no, no, your destiny-line and Korsibar’s will not permit that. It is his time at last, and yours. See, here, you and he rise steadily day by day, and your line lies just beneath his, supporting his, thrusting him higher—”

  “As indeed I did, when I put the idea of taking the crown into his mind.”

  “Yes. Yes. And here he is, trending ever upward, Coronal Lord of Majipoor.” The black line, thicker now, rose like a skyrocket toward the heavens in a sudden spike, stark against the shimmer of red and green behind it in the air.

  “And my line? Where has that gone?” She searched desperately; but all was confusion and swirls of color. “I saw it just a moment ago, the yellow, but now—now—”

  “Ah, milady. At this edge of the chart we stand at what we call in our profession a nexus, a juncture of possible futures where nothing is certain, for opposing pulls are strong and outcomes are subject to the taking of great decisions that still are held in abeyance.”

  “I paid you well,” said Thismet coldly, “to give me certainties, not junctures of possibility.”

  She peered down at him. There was a savage pounding behind her temples; her fingers and toes were cold, and the muscles of her lips and cheeks ached from all the scowling she had done of late. This had not been an easy time for her, these first weeks back at the Castle, when she had hoped only for triumph and joy.

  Had it been a mistake, investing so much faith in this new wizard? He had not given much satisfaction to his previous employers, had he? And now she had fastened on him as though he and he alone held the key to all the mysteries of the universe.

  “Lady, lady, lady,” the Vroon said, with a flurry of his ropy limbs. “All depends on you! Here is your moment! Seize it!” He pointed to the muddled left-hand side of the chart, where Thismet could make out nothing comprehensible. “Everything is made plain here. The issue must be joined, and no more time can be wasted. From the moment of your conceptions, your destiny has been irretrievably entwined with his, and so it is shown here to continue for you and for him to the end of your days—unless you fail to take proper action now. Inaction will separate the lines.—You have told me that what you most truly want is a place of power in the realm.”

  “Yes. That is my hope and desire. Now tell me this, if you can: If my line is entwined with his, as you say—and Sanibak-Thastimoon said the same—then why is it that Korsibar is Coronal, and I—I am nothing at all?”

  “You have no position just now perhaps. But are meant
for great things, lady, if only you reach out to seize them.”

  “Yes, and what things are those? High Counsellor, perhaps? That’ll be Farquanor, I suppose. Member of the Council? Korsibar hasn’t said a word about that to me. He looks pained whenever I come near him these days. He knows I want something from him, and he seems resolved not to give it to me. But why? Why? I made him king. Don’t I deserve a reward?”

  Thalnap Zelifor said, “Have you made any specific request of him, milady?”

  “How can I? What am I supposed to ask for? I told him of the dream I had, the one of the two thrones, he and I sitting facing each other in the throne-room. He laughed and said it was just a dream, that all sorts of wild fantasies come to us in dreams. Then I sent word to him again, by way of Sanibak-Thastimoon, that I hoped for a place in the government. No answer came.”

  “And what place was it that you asked for?”

  “Why, no particular one. One that carried with it some power, that was all.”

  “There is your error, lady. And that is why the chart has entered this zone of uncertainty.”

  ’Tell me, then, what demand I should have made.”

  “You dreamed, you said, of a throne-room with two identical thrones in it. There you have your answer.” The Vroon was looking triumphantly upward at her, his bulging golden eyes bright with vehement assertion. “A joint reign! You and your brother, who shared space within your mother’s belly, must share the power of the government as Coronals together! What other meaning could your dream have had?”