Sorcerers of Majipoor m-4 Read online

  “And I also, Lady,” said Thabin Emilda. But once more she sighed, and turned away so that the Lady would not see the sorrow and doubt in her eyes.

  * * *

  So there was no contending against the tide of magic and fear. In a thousand cities furious confident mages came forth, saying, “This is the way of salvation, these are the spells that will restore the world,” and the people, doleful and frightened and hungry for salvation, said, “Yes, yes, show us the way.” In each city the observances were different, and yet in essence everything was the same everywhere, processions and wild dances, shrieking flutes, roaring trumpets. Omens and prodigies. A brisk trade in talismans, some of them loathsome and disgusting. Blood and wine freely flowing and often mixing. Incense; abominations; the droning chants of the masters of the Mysteries; the propitiation of demons and the adoration of gods. Flashing knives and whips whistling through the air. New strangenesses every day. Thus it was, in this feverish epoch of new beliefs, that the myriad citizens of the huge planet awaited the end of the time of Prankipin Pontifex and the Coronal Lord Confalume, and the coming of the time of Confalume Pontifex and the Coronal Lord Prestimion.

  3

  The chambers where the Coronal had his lodgings at those times when it was necessary for him to visit the capital city of the Pontificate were located on the deepest level of the Labyrinth’s imperial sector, halfway around the perimeter of the city from the secluded bedroom where Pontifex Prankipin lay dying. As Prince Korsibar advanced along the winding corridor leading to his father’s rooms, a tall, angular figure stepped smoothly from the shadows to his left and said, “If you would, prince, a moment’s word.”

  Korsibar recognized the speaker as the aloof and frosty Sanibak-Thastimoon, a man of the Su-Suheris race whom he had taken into his innermost circle of courtiers: his personal magus, his caster of runes and explicator of destinies.

  “The Coronal is expecting me,” said Korsibar.

  “I understand that, sir. A moment, is all I ask.”

  “Well—”

  ’To your possible great advantage.”

  “A moment, then, Sanibak-Thastimoon. Only a moment. Where?”

  The Su-Suheris gestured toward a darkened room within a half-ajar doorway on the other side of the corridor. Korsibar nodded and followed him. It turned out to be a storeroom of some sort, low-ceilinged and cramped and musty, cluttered with tools and cleaning implements.

  “In a service closet, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

  “It is a convenient place,” the Su-Suheris said. He shut the door. A dim glowlight was the only illumination. Korsibar valued Sanibak-Thastimoon’s counsel, but he had never been at such near quarters with the Su-Suheris before, and he felt a quiver of discomfort verging on mistrust. Sanibak-Thastimoon’s slender, two-headed figure loomed above him by some seven inches, an uncommon thing for the long-legged prince to experience. A crisp, dry aroma came from the sorcerer, as of’ fallen leaves burning on a hot autumn day, not an unpleasant odor but one that at this close range was oppressively intense.

  The Su-Suheris folk were relative newcomers to Majipoor. Most of them had come as a result of policies established sixty years or so back, early in Prankipin’s time as Coronal, that had encouraged a period of renewed migration of nonhuman peoples to the giant world. They were a smooth, hairless race, slim and tapering in form. From their tubular bodies rose foot-long columnar necks that divided in a forking way, each of the two branches culminating in a narrow, spindle-shaped head. Korsibar doubted that he would ever be fully comfortable with the strangeness of their appearance. But in these times it was folly not to have a reliable necromancer or two on one’s staff, and it was commonplace knowledge that the Su-Suheris had a full measure of skill in the oracular arts, necromancy and divination, among other things.

  “Well?” Korsibar asked.

  Usually it was the left-hand head that spoke, except when the Su-Suheris was delivering prophecies. In that case he employed the cold, precise voice that emerged from the right-hand one. But this time both heads spoke at once, smoothly coordinated but in tones separated by half an octave. “Troubling news has been brought to your father’s attention concerning you, sir.”

  “Am I in danger? And if I am, why does the news come to his attention before it reaches mine, Sanibak-Thastimoon?”

  “There is no danger to you, excellence. If you take care not to arouse anxieties in your father’s breast.”

  “Anxieties of what sort? Explain yourself,” said Korsibar curtly.

  “Do you recall that I cast a horoscope for you, sir, some months back, that indicated that greatness awaits you in days to come? You will shake the world, Prince Korsibar,’ is what I told you then. You remember this?”

  “Of course. Who’d forget a prophecy like that?”

  The same prediction now has been made for you by one of your father’s oracles. In the very same words, which is a powerful confirmation: ‘He will shake the world.’ Which has left the Coronal exceedingly troubled. His lordship is contemplating his withdrawal from the active world; he would not look kindly on any shaking of it at this time.—This has come to me by trustworthy sources within your father’s own circle, sir.”

  Korsibar sought to meet the sorcerer’s gaze; but it was an infuriating business, not knowing which pair of icy emerald-hued eyes to look at. And having to look so far upward, besides. Tautly he said, “I fail to see what there might be to trouble him in a prophecy like that. I mean him no mischief: he knows that. How could I? He is my father; he is my king. And if by my shaking the world it’s meant that I’ll do great things some day, then he should rejoice. I’ve done nothing but hunt and ride and eat and drink and gamble all my life, but now, apparently, I’m about to achieve something important, is that what your horoscope says? Well, then, three cheers for me! I’ll lead a sailing expedition from one shore of the Great Sea to the other; or I’ll go out into the desert and discover the lost buried treasure of the Shapeshifters; or maybe I’ll—Well, who knows? Not I. Something big, whatever it is. Lord Confalume ought to be very pleased.”

  “What he is afraid of, I suspect, is that you will do something rash and foolish, your excellence, that will bring much harm to the world.”

  “Does he?”

  “So I am assured, yes.”

  “And does he regard me, then, as such a reckless child?”

  “He places much faith in oracles.”

  “Well, and so do we all. ‘He will shake the world.’ Fine. What’s there in that that needs to be interpreted so darkly? The world can be shaken in good ways as well as bad, you know. I’m no earthquake, Sanibak-Thastimoon, that will bring my father’s castle tumbling down the side of the Mount, am I? Or are you hiding something from me of which even I myself am unaware?”

  “I want only to warn you, sir, that his lordship is apprehensive concerning you and your intentions, and may ask you bothersome difficult questions, and that when you go before him now it would be best if you took care to give him no occasion whatsoever for suspicion.”

  “Suspicion of what?” cried Korsibar, in some vexation now. “I have no intentions! I’m a simple honorable man, Sanibak-Thastimoon! My conscience is clear!”

  But the Su-Suheris had nothing more to say. He shrugged, which for him was a gesture that amounted to drawing his long forked neck halfway down into his chest and hooking his six-fingered hands inward on his wrists. The four green eyes became implacably opaque; the lip-less, harsh-angled mouth-slits offered no further response. So there was no use pursuing the issue.

  You will shake the world.

  What could that mean? Korsibar had never wanted to shake anything. All his life he had desired only simple straightforward things: to rove the Fifty Cities of Castle Mount in quest of this pleasure or that one, and to go forth along the remote wilderness trails in quest of the fierce beasts he loved to hunt, and to play at quoits and chariot-racing, to spend the long nights at the Castle itself drinking and carousing with his comrades. W
hat more could there be for him in life? He was a prince of royal blood, yes, but the irony of his lineage was that he could never be more than he already was, for no Coronal’s son had ever been permitted to follow him to the Coronal’s throne.

  By ancient tradition the junior monarchy was an adoptive one; always had been, always would be. Lord Confalume, when he finally became Pontifex a week or three hence, would officially designate Prestimion of Muldemar as his son and heir, and Korsibar, the true flesh-and-blood son, would be relegated to some grand and airy estate high up on the Mount. There he would spend the rest of his years as he had spent the first two decades of them, living a comfortable idle existence among the other pensioned-off princes of the realm. That was his destiny. Everyone knew that. He had been aware of it himself ever since his boyhood, ever since he could understand that his father was a king. Why had Sanibak-Thastimoon chosen to trouble him now with this oracular nonsense about shaking the world? Why, for that matter, had the chilly-spirited, austere sorcerer been urging him so strongly of late to rise above his pleasant life of luxury and idleness and seek some higher fulfillment? Surely Sanibak-Thastimoon understood the impossibility of that.

  You will shake the world. Indeed.

  Impatiently, Korsibar gestured to Sanibak-Thastimoon to stand aside, and went out into the hall.

  * * *

  The immense outer door of the Coronal’s suite, all agleam with dazzling golden inlays of the starburst emblem and with his father’s LCC monogram—which would have to be changed soon enough to Prestimion’s LPC—confronted him. Three prodigious swaggering Skandars in the green and gold uniform of the Coronal’s royal guard stood before it.

  Korsibar craned his neck to look up at the shaggy four-armed beings, nearly half again as tall even as he, and said, “The Coronal has asked me to come to him.”

  At the Castle, sometimes, the guardians of the Coronal’s office would make him wait like any young knight-initiate, Coronal’s son though he might be, because his lordship was busy with his ministers of state, or his intimate counsellors, or perhaps some visiting regional administrators. The son of the Coronal had no formal rank of his own, and those others took precedence over him. But today the guards moved aside instantly and let him go in.

  Lord Confalume was at his desk, a broad polished platform of glossy crimson simbajinder-wood rising from a thick podium of black geli-maund. The only illumination was the bright orange glow emanating from a trio of thick spiral-shafted candles of black wax set in heavy iron sconces, and the air was sweet and steamy with the rank piercing fragrance of burning incense, rising in two gray-blue coils of smoke from golden thuribles on either side of the Coronal’s seat.

  He was involved in a conjuration of some sort. Charts and works of reference covered his desk, and interspersed among them were all manner of instruments and devices having to do with the geomantic arts. Korsibar, who kept people like Sanibak-Thastimoon on hand to deal with such matters for him, had no idea what the purpose of most of those objects might be, though even he recognized the whisk-broomlike ammatepala that was used to sprinkle the water of perception across one’s forehead, and the shining coils and posts of an armillary sphere, and the triangular stone vessel known as a veralistia, in which one burned the aromatic powders that enhanced one’s insight into the future.

  Korsibar waited patiently while his father, not looking up, carried out what seemed to be the conclusion of some lengthy and elaborate tabulation of numbers. And said quietly, when Lord Confalume appeared to be finished, “You wanted to see me, Father?”

  “A moment more. Just a moment.”

  Three times in a clockwise way the Coronal rubbed the rohilla that was pinned to his collar. Then he dipped both his thumbs in an ivory vessel containing some bluish fluid and touched them to his eyelids. With bowed head and closed eyes the Coronal murmured something that sounded like the words “Adabambo, adabamboli, adambo,” which meant nothing at all to Korsibar, and pressed the tips of his little fingers and thumbs together. Lastly, Lord Confalume let his breath come forth from his nostrils in a long series of quick sighing exhalations, so that after a time his lungs were emptied and his head rested on his sunken chest, shoulders slumped, eyes rolled up toward the top of his head.

  Korsibar’s own belief in the powers of magic was as strong as anyone’s. And yet he was surprised and a bit dismayed to see his royal father so deeply enmeshed in these arcane practices, at the cost of who knew what quantity of his waning energies. The expenditure was all too obvious. Lord Confalume’s face was drawn and gray, and he seemed tired, though it was still only mid-morning. There were lines of stress along his brow and cheeks that appeared unfamiliar to Korsibar.

  The prince and his sister Thismet were the children of the Coronal’s late middle age, and there was a gap of many decades between his age and theirs; but that difference in age was only now making itself apparent. Indeed, the Coronal had seemed a good deal younger to Korsibar earlier that day in the antechamber to the Hall of Justice than he looked at this moment; but perhaps that look of youthful middle age had been a mere pretense, a facade he was capable of donning while in the presence of the other princes and dukes, and which he no longer had the strength to maintain in the privacy of this meeting with his son.

  Seeing his father this wearied, Korsibar’s heart went out to him. The Coronal, he knew, had every reason to be weary, and not just from the exertions of these sorceries. For the past forty-three years, a span of time unimaginable to Korsibar, the Coronal Lord Confalume had had the task of reigning over this giant planet. To be sure, he reigned in the name of the Pontifex, and it was the Pontifex in whom all ultimate responsibility for decision was vested. But the Pontifex lived hidden away in the secrecy and security of the Labyrinth. It was the Coronal who had to remain endessly on public display, holding open court at the Castle atop the Mount, and going forth into the world as well, every six or eight years, to fulfill the custom of the grand processional by which the Coronal presented himself in person in every major city of all three continents.

  In making the grand processional it was the junior monarch’s task to convey himself beyond the Fifty Cities of the Mount, and onward across the sea to distant Zimroel and its great metropolis of Ni-moya, and grim Piliplok of the terrifyingly straight streets, and Khyntor and Dulorn and flowery Til-omon and Pidruid and all those other faraway places whose existence was barely more than legendary to Korsibar: displaying himself to the multitudes as the living symbol of the system that had governed this gigantic world since the dawn of its historic period so many thousands of years before. Small wonder Lord Confalume looked tired. He had lived long enough to have made the grand processional not once but five times. He had carried all of Majipoor on his shoulders for some years longer than four full decades.

  Korsibar stood a long time waiting, and said nothing. And waited some more. And still the Coronal busied himself with his sorcery-things, as though he had forgotten Korsibar was there. And Korsibar waited.

  And went on waiting. When the Coronal required one to wait, one waited, and did not question the waiting. Even if he were one’s own father.

  * * *

  After a long while Lord Confalume looked up at last, and blinked a couple of times at Korsibar as though he were surprised to see him in the room. Then the Coronal said, with no preamble, “You amazed me more than a little this morning, Korsibar. I never imagined you’d have the slightest objection to starting the games early.”

  “I confess some amazement at your amazement, Father. Do you perceive me as such a shallow thing? Do you look on me as having no sense whatever of proper conduct?”

  “Have I ever given you reason to think so?”

  “You give me no reason to think otherwise. All my adult life I’ve simply been left free to amuse myself, like some oversized child. Am I invited to sit in on councils? Am I given high responsibilities and duties? No. No. What I’m given is a happy life of leisure and sport.—‘Here, Korsibar: how do you like th
is fine sword? This saddle, this bow of Khyntor workmanship?—These fiery-tempered racing-mounts have just been sent to us from the breeders at Marraitis, Korsibar: take your pick, boy, the best is none too good for you.—Where will you hunt this season, Korsibar? In the northern marches, perhaps, or will it be in the jungles of Pulidandra?’ And so it has been, Father, all my life.”

  The Coronal’s tired face seemed to sag into an even deeper weariness as Korsibar’s verbal barrage went on and on.

  “That was the life you wanted for yourself,” he said, when the prince had subsided. “Or so I believed.”

  “And indeed I did. But what other kind of life could I have chosen to have?”

  “You could have been whatever you pleased. You had the finest of princely educations, boy.”

  “A fine education, yes! And for what purpose, Father? I can name a hundred Pontifexes from Dvorn to Vildivar, all in the proper order, and then name fifty more. I’ve studied the codes of the law, the Decretals and the Synods and the Balances and all the rest of that. I can draw you maps of Zimroel and Alhanroel and put all the cities in their proper locations. I know the pathways of the stars and I can quote you inspiring passages from all the best epic poets from Furvain to Auliasi. What of it? What good does any of it do me? Should I have written poetry myself? Should I have been a clerk? A philosopher, perhaps?”

  The Coronal’s eyelids fluttered and closed for a moment, and he pressed the tips of his fingers to his temples. Then he opened his eyes and stared balefully at his son, a hooded, rigorously patient look.

  “The Balances, you say. You’ve studied the Balances. If that’s so, then you understand the inner rhythms of our governmental structure and you know why you’ve been given swords and saddles and fine mounts instead of high public responsibilities. We have no hereditary monarchy here. You picked the wrong father, boy: for you alone, of all the princes of Castle Mount, there can never be any place in the government.”