Sorcerers of Majipoor
( Majipoor - 4 )
Robert Silverberg
The aged Pontifex Prankipin is near death and the Coronal Lord Confalume will now succeed as Pontifex. It is no secret that the next Coronal should be Prince Prestimion of Muldemar. But Korsibar has a new quarry—the Starburst Crown.
Sorcerers of Majipoor
by Robert Silverberg
… the hour when safety leaves the throne of kings,
the hour when dynasties change.
—Lord Dunsany
The Sword of Welleran
Once again for Ralph
Ne plus ultra
Sine qua non
I. The Book of the Games
1
There had been omens all year, a rain of blood over Ni-moya and sleek hailstones shaped like tears falling on three of the cities of Castle Mount and then a true nightmare vision, a giant four-legged black beast with fiery ruby eyes and a single spiraling horn in its forehead, swimming through the air above the port city of Alaisor at twilight. That was a beast of a sort never before seen on Majipoor, not anywhere in the land and certainly not in the sky. And now, in his virtually inaccessible bedchamber at the deepest level of the Labyrinth, the aged Pontifex Prankipin lay dying at last, surrounded by the corps of mages and wizards and thaumaturges that had been the comfort of the old man’s later years.
Throughout the world it was a time of tension and apprehension. Who could tell what transformations and hazards the death of the Pontifex might bring? Things had been stable for so long: four full decades, and then some, since there had been a change of ruler on Majipoor.
As soon as word of the Pontifex’s illness had first gone forth, the lords and princes and dukes of Majipoor began to gather at the vast underground capital for the double event—the sad passing of an illustrious emperor, and the joyous commencement of a new and glorious reign. Now they waited with increasing and barely concealed restlessness for the thing that everyone knew must shortly come.
But the weeks went by and still the old Pontifex clung to life, dying by the tiniest of increments, losing ground slowly and with the most extreme reluctance. The imperial doctors had long since acknowledged the hopelessness of his case. Nor were the imperial sorcerers and mages able to make any use of their arts to save him. Indeed, they had foretold the inevitability of his death many months ago, though not to him. They waited too, as all Majipoor waited, for their prophecy to be confirmed.
Prince Korsibar, the splendid and universally admired son of the Coronal Lord Confalume, was the first of the great ones to arrive at the Pontifical capital. Korsibar had been hunting in the bleak deserts just to the south of the Labyrinth when the news came to him that the Pontifex did not have long to live. At his side was his sister, the dark-eyed and lovely Lady Thismet, and an assemblage of his usual princely hunting companions; and then, a few days after, had come the Grand Admiral of the kingdom, Prince Gonivaul, and the Coronal’s cousin Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar, whose rank was that of High Counsellor, and not far behind them the fabulously wealthy Prince Serithorn of Samivole, who claimed descent from no less than four different Coronals of antiquity.
The vigorous, dynamic young Prince Prestimion of Muldemar—he who was generally expected to be chosen as Majipoor’s new Coronal once Lord Confalume succeeded Prankipin as Pontifex—had arrived also, traveling down from his home within the Coronal’s castle atop great Castle Mount in Serithorn’s party. With Prestimion were his three inseparable companions—the hulking wintry-souled Gialaurys and the deceptively exquisite Septach Melayn and slippery little Duke Svor. Other high potentates turned up before long: Dantirya Sambail, the brusque and formidable Procurator of Ni-moya, and jolly Kanteverel of Bailemoona, and the hierarch Marcatain, personal representative of the Lady of the Isle of Sleep. Then Lord Confalume himself made his appearance: the great Coronal. Some said he was the greatest in Majipoor’s long history. For decades he had presided in happy collaboration with the senior monarch Prankipin over a period of unparalleled worldwide prosperity.
So all was in place for the proclamation of succession. And the arrival of Lord Confalume at the Labyrinth surely meant that the end must be near for Prankipin; but the event that everyone was expecting did not come, and did not come, and went on not coming, day after day, week after week.
Of all the restless princes, it was Korsibar, the Coronal’s robust and energetic son, who appeared to be taking the delay most badly. He was a man of the outdoors, famous as a huntsman: a long-limbed, broad-shouldered man whose lean hard-cheeked face was tanned almost black from a lifetime spent under the full blaze of the sun. This dreary sojourn in the immense subterranean cavern that was the Labyrinth was maddening to him.
Korsibar had just spent close to a year planning and equipping an ambitious hunting expedition through the southern arc of the continent of Alhanroel. That was something he had dreamed of for much of his life: a far-ranging enterprise that would have covered thousands of miles and allowed him to fill the trophy room that he kept for himself at Lord Confalume’s Castle with a grand display of new and marvelous beasts. But after only ten days in the field he had had to abort the project and hurry here, to the somber and musty place that was the Labyrinth, that sunless, joyless hidden realm deep beneath the skin of the planet.
Where, apparently, he would be compelled, for his father’s sake and the sake of his own conspicuous station, to pace and fidget idly in that many-leveled infinity of endlessly spiraling passageways for weeks or even months. Not daring to leave, interminably awaiting the hour when the old Pontifex breathed his last breath and Lord Confalume succeeded to the imperial throne.
Meanwhile, other men less nobly born were free to range the hunting grounds far above his head to their heart’s content. Korsibar was reaching the point of not being able to bear it any longer. He dreamed of the hunt; he dreamed of looking upward into the bright clear sky, and feeling cool, sweet northerly breezes against his cheek. As his idle days and nights in the Labyrinth stretched on and on, the force of the impatience within him was building toward an explosion.
* * *
The waiting, that’s the filthy worst of it,” Korsibar said, looking around at the group assembled in the big onyx-roofed antechamber of the Hall of Judgment. That antechamber, three levels up from the imperial chambers themselves, had become a regular place of assembly for the visiting lordlings. “The everlasting waiting! Gods! When will he die? Let it happen, since there’s no preventing it! Let it happen, and let us be done with it.”
“Everything will come in the fullness of time,” said Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar in rotund and pious tones.
“How much longer must we sit here?” Korsibar rejoined angrily. The whole world is thrown into a paralysis by this business as it is.” The morning’s bulletin on the state of the Pontifex’s health had just been posted. No change during the night; his majesty’s condition remained grave but he continued to hold his own. Korsibar pounded his balled fist into the palm of his hand. “We wait, and we wait, and we wait. And wait some more, and nothing happens. Did we all come here too soon?”
“The considered opinion of the doctors was that his majesty did not have long to live,” said the elegant Septach Melayn. He was Prestimion’s closest friend, a tall and slender man of foppish manner but fearsome skill with weapons. “Therefore it was only reasonable for us to come here when we did, and—”
A stupendous belch and then a mighty booming laugh erupted from the huge and heavyset Farholt, a rough uproarious man of Prince Korsibar’s entourage who traced his lineage back to the Coronal Lord Guadeloom of distant ancient days. “The opinion of the doctors? The opinion of the doctors, you say? God’s bon
es, what are doctors except false sorcerers whose spells don’t work right?”
“And the spells of true sorcerers do, is that what you would claim?” asked Septach Melayn, drawling his words in his laziest, most mocking way. He eyed the massive Farholt with unconcealed distaste. “Answer me this, good friend Farholt: someone has put a rapier through the fleshy part of your arm in a tournament, let us say, and you lie bleeding on the field, watching your blood flow from you in bright wondrous spurts. Would you rather have a sorcerer run out to mutter incantations over you, or a good surgeon to stitch up your wound?”
“When has anyone ever put a rapier through my arm, or any other part of my body?” Farholt demanded, glaring sullenly.
“Ah, but you quite overlook my point, don’t you, my dear friend?”
“Do you mean the point of your rapier or the point of your question?” said quick-witted little Duke Svor, that sly, mercurial man, who for a long while had been a companion to Prince Korsibar but now was reckoned among Prestimion’s most cherished comrades.
There was a brief flurry of brittle laughter. But Korsibar, with a furious roll of his eyes, threw his arms upward in disgust. “An end to all this idle chatter, now and forever! Don’t you see what foolishness it is to be passing our days like this? Wasting our time in this dank airless prison of a city, when we could be up above, living as we were meant to live—”
“Soon; Soon,” Duke Oljebbin of Stoienzar said, raising his hand in a soothing gesture. He was older than the others by twenty years, with a thick shock of snowy hair and deep lines in his cheeks to show for those years; he spoke with the calmness of maturity. “This can’t go on much longer now.”
“A week? A month? A year?” Korsibar asked hotly.
“A pillow over the old man’s face and it would all be done with this very morning,” Farholt muttered.
That provoked laughter again, of a coarser kind this time, but also stares of amazement, most notably from Korsibar, and even a gasp or two at the big man’s bluntness.
Duke Svor said, with a chilly little smile that briefly bared his small wedge-shaped front teeth, “Crude, Farholt, much too crude. A subtler thing to do, if he continues to linger, would be to suborn one of the Pontifex’s own necromancers: twenty royals would buy a few quick incantations and conjurations that would send the old man finally on his way.”
“What’s that, Svor?” said a new and instantly recognizable voice from the vestibule, resonant and rich. “Speaking treason, are we, now?”
It was the Coronal Lord Confalume, entering the room on the arm of Prince Prestimion. The two of them looked for all the world as if they had already succeeded to their new ranks and now, with Confalume as Pontifex and Prestimion as Coronal, had been merrily reshaping the world to their own liking over breakfast. All eyes turned toward them.
“I beg your pardon, lordship,” said Svor smoothly, swinging about to face the Coronal. He executed a graceful if abrupt bow and a quick flourish of the starburst gesture of respect. “It was only a foolish jest. Nor do I believe that Farholt was serious a moment ago, either, when he advocated smothering the Pontifex with his own pillow.”
“And were you, Farholt?” the Coronal asked the big man. His tone was light but not without menace.
Farholt was not known for the quickness of his mind; and while he was still struggling to frame his reply, Korsibar said, “Nothing serious has been said in this room for weeks, Father. What is serious is the endless delay in this matter. Which is greatly straining our nerves.”
“And mine as well, Korsibar. We must all be patient a little longer. But perhaps a medicine for your impatience—a better one than Svor’s or Farholt’s—is at hand.” The Coronal smiled. Easily, he moved to the center of the room, taking up a position beneath a scarlet silken canopy that bore the intricately repetitive Pontifical emblem in a tracery of golden filigree and black diamonds.
Confalume was a man of no more than middle height, but sturdily built, deep-chested and thick-thighed, true father to his stalwart son. From him there emanated the serene radiance of one who has long been at home in his own grandeur. This was Lord Confalume’s forty-third year as Coronal, a record matched by very few. Yet he still seemed to be in the fullness of his strength. Even now his eyes were bright and his high sweep of chestnut hair was only just starting to turn gray.
To the collar of the Coronal’s soft green jersey a little astrological amulet of the sort known as a rohilla was fastened, delicate strands of blue gold wrapped in an elaborate pattern around a nugget of jade. He touched it now, the quickest of little pats and then another, as though to draw strength from it. And others in the room touched amulets of their own in response, perhaps without conscious thought. In recent years Lord Confalume, taking his cue from the ever more occult-minded Pontifex, had come to show increasing sympathy for the curious new esoteric philosophies that now were so widely embraced on all levels of Majipoori society; and the rest of the court had thoughtfully followed suit, all but a stubbornly skeptical few.
The Coronal seemed to be giving his intimate attention to everyone in the room at once as he spoke: “Prestimion has come to me this morning with a suggestion that has much merit, I think. He is aware, as are we all, of the strain that this period of enforced idleness is causing. And so Prince Prestimion proposes that instead of our waiting for his majesty’s death to initiate the traditional funeral games, we set about holding the first round of competition immediately. It will be a way of passing the time.”
From Farholt came a grunting sound of surprise mixed with an undertone of approbation. But the others, even Korsibar, were silent for a moment.
Then Duke Svor asked very quietly, “Would such a thing be proper, my lord?”
“On grounds of precedent?”
“On grounds of taste,” said Svor.
The Coronal regarded Svor with undiminished amiability. “And are we not the world’s arbiters of taste, Svor?”
There was a stirring now in the little group of Prince Korsibar’s close friends and hunting companions. Mandrykarn of Stee whispered something to Count Venta of Haplior, and Venta drew Korsibar aside and spoke briefly to him. The prince appeared troubled and surprised by what Venta had to say.
Then Korsibar looked up and said abruptly, “May I speak, Father?” Uneasiness was evident on his long strong-featured face, which was tightened and twisted by a heavy scowl; he tugged at the ends of his thick black mustache, wrapped one powerful hand over the back of his neck and squeezed. “I see it in the same way as Svor: the thing seems improper. To launch into the funeral games before the Pontifex is even in his grave—”
“I find nothing wrong with that, cousin,” offered Duke Oljebbin. “So long as we save the parades and the feasting and the other such celebrations for afterward, what does it matter if we get the contests under way now? Prankipin’s finished: that’s undeniable, is it not? The imperial sorcerers have cast their runes and tell us the Pontifex is soon to die. His doctors predict the same thing.”
“With, let us hope, more substantial evidence than the sorcerers,” put in Septach Melayn, who was notorious for his scorn of magics of all sorts, even in this most superstitious of ages.
Korsibar made an irritable brushing gesture in the air as though Septach Melayn were no more than a buzzing gnat. “You all know that no one is more eager than I am to end this time of grinding inaction. But—” He halted a moment, frowning deeply and letting his nostrils flare, as if finding the right words involved him in a terrible struggle. Glancing quickly as if for support toward Mandrykarn and Venta, Korsibar said at last, “I beg the great Duke Oljebbin’s pardon if I offend him by disagreeing. But there are proprieties, Father. There are issues of appropriate conduct here. And—yes, by the Divine, Svor is right!—issues of taste.”
“You astonish me, Korsibar,” Lord Confalume said. “I thought you of all people would leap at the idea. But instead—this unexpected fastidiousness of yours—”
“What, Korsibar,
fastidious?” came a raucous blustery voice from the entrance to the chamber. “Yes, and water is dry, and fire is cool, and sweet is sour. Korsibar! Fastidious! Two words I’d never have thought to hear yoked in a single sentence.”
It was Dantirya Sambail, the abrasive and ferocious prince who held the title of Procurator of Ni-moya. Into the antechamber now he strode, hard-soled boots clacking against the black marble of the floor, and instantly he was the center of all attention.
The Procurator, offering no gesture of homage to Lord Confalume, fixed his eyes steadily on those of the Coronal and said, “What is it that we are discussing, pray tell, that has brought forth this implausible linkage of opposing concepts?”
“What has happened,” Lord Confalume replied, matching Dantirya Sambail’s choleric loudness with his own sweetest and most pleasant tone, “is that your kinsman of Muldemar has suggested the immediate inception of the funeral games, because we are all becalmed here unhappily as Prankipin keeps his grasp on life. My son appears to oppose the idea.”
“Ah,” said Dantirya Sambail, in seeming fascination. And then again, after a moment: “Ah!”
The Procurator had taken up his characteristic spread-legged stance, squarely facing Lord Confalume beneath the central canopy. He was an imposingly sizable man of about fifty, who might have been the tallest in the room had his stubby legs not been so oddly disproportionate to his long, thick torso; as it was, he was second here only to Farholt in bulk, a commanding figure.
But a repellent one. Dantirya Sambail was strikingly, almost magnificently, ugly. His head was a huge glossy dome thickly furred with coarse orange hair; his skin was pale and flecked with myriad flaming freckles; his nose was bulbous, his mouth wide and savagely downturned, his cheeks fleshy and drooping, his chin strongly jutting. Yet out of this violent and disagreeable face stared incongruously sensitive and tender violet-gray eyes, the eyes of a poet, the eyes of a lover. He was Prestimion’s third cousin twice removed, on his mother’s side, and by virtue of his authority over the far-off continent of Zimroel, was subordinate only to the Pontifex and Coronal among the high ones of Majipoor. The Coronal was known to detest him. Many people did. But he was too powerful to ignore.
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