Sorcerers of Majipoor by Robert Silverberg
“You’re overwrought, Oljebbin. Sit down and have some wine with me. This absurd tale about Lord Korsibar—”
“Not just Korsibar. Gonivaul’s been to see me. The thing is spreading like a plague. Do you know what they’re telling each other in places like Alaisor and Sisivondal? That we’re all Metamorphs, every last one of us, you and me and Gonivaul and Farquanor and Farholt and Dantirya Sambail—”
“Well,” said Serithorn, “I wouldn’t care to speak for Farquanor and Farholt, and Gonivaul may very likely be a Metamorph for all I know, although if he is he’s a deucedly hairy one; and as for Dantirya Sambail, I never thought he was a human being in the first place—but I tell you flat out that I am myself and nothing other than myself, as incapable of changing shapes as I am of making love to twenty women the same night, and I’m reasonably confident that you are quite genuine too. Reasonably confident, I say. I don’t have serious doubts of you. I’d be willing to accept at face value any oath that you’d care to swear as to your humanity, old friend, and never once hereafter would I let anyone try to make me believe that you were actually—”
“Serithorn, for once in your life be serious!” cried Oljebbin explosively.
“Very well.” The little smile that was Serithorn’s usual expression gave way to a look of dour glowering intensity worthy of Farholt or Gialaurys. “I am serious now.”
“Thank you. Listen to me: of course I don’t believe that Korsibar’s a Metamorph, or that you are, or that I may be one myself and simply haven’t noticed. It’s all too ridiculous for words. But the fact is that five or ten billion people out there seem to think he is. Gonivaul’s been making inquiries, and the story’s all over Alhanroel by now, in at least a dozen different permutations, each one more preposterous than the next. What effect do you think this is having on Korsibar’s legitimacy in the eyes of those five billion people? Don’t you think he’s hideously compromised by it? He takes the throne by unconstitutional means, for which he’s already being denounced up and down the land by nobody less than the former Lady of the Isle, Kunigarda herself, who’s spouting subversive sendings day and night. And then it becomes widely believed that he’s not only not human but is in fact a Shapeshifter who’s disguised himself as Korsibar—” Oljebbin ran both his hands agitatedly through his thick shock of white hair. “Prestimion’s alive, did you know that?” he asked. “And is about to make a second try at claiming the throne.”
Serithorn’s elegant facade of unshakable poise gave way to a gasp of astonishment.
“Alive?”
“Yes. This is confirmed, just today. I don’t think the Coronal knows it yet. Farquanor’s afraid to tell him, apparently. Prestimion has been in Triggoin, it seems, but now, according to Gonivaul, he’s out and marching around again somewhere in western Alhanroel, patching together those pieces of the rebel army that Korsibar didn’t drown, and recruiting a new—”
There was a knock at the door.
“Gonivaul,” Oljebbin said. “I asked him to join me here.”
“Come in, admiral!” Serithorn called, and Prince Gonivaul strode into the room. His shaggy-bearded face was grim and stormy.
“Has Oljebbin told you—” he began.
“Yes,” Serithorn said. “We’re all supposed to be Metamorphs. Well, we aren’t, and that’s that. But what’s this business about Prestimion being alive?”
“He is. That’s definite. He’s come out of the north—Triggoin, I hear—and has set up headquarters for himself in the plains between Gloyn and Marakeeba, which are places somewhere on the far side of the Trikkalas. He’s collecting a new army there, with the notion of marching to Castle Mount, gathering up a billion or so rebel soldiers along the way, and pushing Korsibar off the throne.”
“Is he the one behind this lunatic thing of Korsibar’s being a Metamorph?” Serithorn asked.
Gonivaul shrugged. “I can’t say. There’s probably no connection. But certainly he’ll be willing to make damaging use of it as propaganda. ‘Accept me as your true Coronal in place of this creature who pretends to be Korsibar,’ he’ll say. ‘The person you take for Korsibar is not only an unlawful Coronal but an evil Metamorph impostor!’ And people will gobble it up. —There’s a germ of truth, I think, in this Metamorph fable, anyway.”
“There is?” said Oljebbin and Serithorn at one and the same instant.
“Oh, not literally,” Gonivaul said. “But Korsibar’s been very thick these last few months with the Vroon Thalnap Zelifor, who used to work for me once upon a time, and who, as you may recall, got himself into big trouble with Korsibar last year by putting some kind of wild ideas into the Lady Thismet’s head and after that by running off to join Prestimion. When the Vroon came scooting back here after Prestimion’s defeat at Stymphinor, he managed somehow to talk his way into Korsibar’s good graces, don’t ask me how, and has been right up there in prestige with Sanibak-Thastimoon on his staff of mages ever since.
“Well, this Thalnap Zelifor is very good with gadgets, and I happen to know that something he was working on when he was in my pay was a device that would allow the wearer to seem to change shape. Not actual shapeshifting, mind you, just the illusion of it. Now, there definitely seems to be some escapade of Korsibar’s at the bottom of all these stories—he was seen changing shapes in Bombifale or Bibiroon or somewhere by a vacationing businessman who doesn’t seem to have had any reason to be inventing the tale, and he says Korsibar had a Vroon with him at the time. My guess is that he and Thalnap Zelifor slipped away from the Castle to experiment with this machine, and got careless with it just as the businessman happened by. After which the story started circulating that—”
“All right,” Oljebbin said. “Whether it did or didn’t happen that way, the main thing is that the story’s traveling like wildfire and doing Korsibar alot of harm. Metamorphs are feared and detested everywhere. He’ll have a hard time scrubbing away the taint. True or false, this business is bound to weaken Korsibar’s position with the common folk, which is weak enough already now that Kunigarda’s been speaking out against him. With Prestimion suddenly back in the picture, what I want to know from you two is this: is this the moment for us to withdraw our support from Korsibar too?”
“In favor of Prestimion?” Serithorn asked, eyebrows lifting in surprise.
“No,” said Oljebbin sharply. “In favor of Prankipin’s embalmed corpse. In favor of the statue of Lord Stiamot, maybe. Who do you think I’m talking about, Serithorn?”
“Prestimion doesn’t have a chance of becoming Coronal, not now, not ever,” said Serithorn in a quiet emphatic tone.
“You say this?” asked Oljebbin. “You, his good friend for so long, his mother’s very good friend?”
Serithorn reddened faintly at that. But his voice remained calm as he replied, “There’s a curse of some sort on Prestimion. Anybody who couldn’t keep an idiot like Korsibar from nudging him aside when the throne became vacant and the whole world was expecting him to become Coronal is plainly marked by the gods for misfortune. Now that he’s back in view and heading this way, something will go wrong again. Korsibar will dump another reservoir on him or a stray arrow will get him or he’ll be eaten by vorzaks as he comes over the mountains. Mark my words, Prestimion won’t have any more success this time than he did before.”
“So if we were to back him,” Oljebbin said, “we’d be cutting our own throats?”
“Essentially,” said Serithorn.
“But that would leave us with a Coronal who half the world believes is a Metamorph! There’s no way Korsibar can stand up in front of everybody and prove he isn’t one, is there? This numbskull rumor will eventually do irreparable harm to his ability to govern, if it hasn’t already, and then—”
“You’re forgetting someone,” Gonivaul said.
Oljebbin stared. “What do you mean?”
“The name of Dantirya Sambail hasn’t been mentioned at all since I entered the room. Korsibar’s done for, I agree: these wild stories
“I agree completely. Korsibar’s position is suddenly very wobbly, not that it was tremendously strong in the first place, because of the legalities, Coronal’s son becoming Coronal, and all that. Prestimion’s isn’t any better. He was never officially named Coronal-designate, after all. So, even if he’s the winner in this new war that’s shaping up, he’s got no very valid claim himself. Dantirya Sambail, on the other hand, can argue that as Procurator of Ni-moya he stands second only to the Pontifex Confalume, and therefore is the logical and legitimate heir to the Coronal’s throne.”
“Very well thought out,” said Oljebbin. “At last I make out a pattern in all this chaos. Our strategy, my lords, is to pledge our undying support in the coming challenge for the throne to our beloved Lord Korsibar and his loyal ally the Procurator of Ni-moya, and roundly condemn the audacity of the criminal upstart Prestimion. If Korsibar somehow survives and remains on the throne, he’ll be indebted to us forever. If he doesn’t, he’ll almost certainly be replaced as Coronal by Dantirya Sambail, who also will be grateful to have had our help. Either way, we’re on the winning side. Are we agreed, gentlemen?”
“Absolutely,” said Gonivaul at once.
“Let us drink to it,” said Serithorn, pulling a dusty bottle of wine from his cabinet. “Good Muldemar wine, as it happens, Prestimion’s own. Fifteen years old. —To peace, gentlemen! To everlasting peace and harmony in the world!”
6
THISMET SAID, “Have you heard these stories, Melithyrrh, that say that my brother is a Metamorph?”
“What foolishness they are, my lady!”
“Yes. Foolishness indeed. If he is a Metamorph, then what am I, who was hatched in the same womb as he?”
“The stories, as I hear them, have it that he was replaced by a Metamorph secretly as a grown man, not that he was born one. But all of it is nonsense. You should pay no attention, my lady.”
“True. I shouldn’t. But it’s so hard, Melithyrrh!”
Thismet rose from her divan and crossed the room to the octagonal window that gave a view of Lord Siminave’s dazzling reflecting pool, and then, pivoting restlessly, went to the other side, opening her wardrobe’s fragrant doors of shimmak-wood to reveal all her wealth of clothing within, the scores of brocaded robes and jeweled gowns and bodices and chemises and cassocks and all the rest, everything fashioned from her own design by the most skilled clothing-makers of Majipoor. She had worn many of them only once or twice, some not at all; and now they needed to be refitted, so lean and gaunt had she become in these sour days. She barely ate any longer; she scarcely slept. Korsibar’s coming to the throne, which had seemed such a glorious thing to her once, had been the ruination of them both.
Melithyrrh said, “My lady, please—this pacing, this constant fretting of yours—”
“I’ve had to swallow too much, Melithyrrh! Traitors and villains on all sides. The sorcerer Sanibak-Thastimoon, who deludes me into thinking great things are in store for me, and turns his back on me at the first opportunity! The other sorcerer, Thalnap Zelifor, who goads me into giving offense to my brother, and then leaves me altogether, and when he returns is suddenly my brother’s devoted servant! Or the vile Farquanor, who comes right into these rooms—he stood over there, in the jade drawing room—I should have had the floor scrubbed with acid afterward—and says to me, cool as ice, ‘Marry me, Thismet, it will improve your social standing at the Castle.’ Calling me Thismet, as though I were a serving-wench! And going unpunished for it when I denounced him to Korsibar.”
“My lady—”
“And Korsibar,” Thismet went on. “My wonderful heroic brother, who made himself Coronal simply because I told him to do it, and who rewards me by making me an exile within the very walls of the Castle, ignored, excluded, shunted about with impunity, while he surrounds himself with cheats and liars and treacherous traitors who are leading him to destruction, men like Dantirya Sambail lording it around the Castle now as though he were Coronal and Pontifex both at once—too much, Melithyrrh, much too much! I can abide this place and these people no longer.” She drifted on into the room adjacent, where her treasures of jewelry were housed, her wondrous rings and pendants and necklaces that were the equal of the best that any Coronal’s consort had ever possessed, and stood with her delicate white hands plunged deep amongst them as though it was some hoard of buried treasure that she had just uncovered. After a time she said in a much quieter voice, “Melithyrrh, will you accompany me on a little journey?”
“Of course, my lady. A few days in High Morpin, perhaps—they’ll do you a world of good. Or a visit to the gardens at Tolingar—a holiday in Bombifale—”
“No,” Thismet said. “Not Bombifale, not Tolingar. Nor High Morpin neither. A longer journey is what I have in mind. Do you know where Gloyn is, Melithyrrh?”
“Gloyn?” Melithyrrh repeated blankly, as though Thismet had spoken the name of some other planet.
“Gloyn. It’s a city, or maybe a town, in western Alhanroel, across the Trikkala Mountains, but this side of Alaisor.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Melithyrrh, mystified.
“No. Nor I, before this day. But I have a mind to go there now. To leave tomorrow, just you and I together. Come, let’s pack some things. You can operate a floater, can’t you? And I’m fairly sure I can. I can’t tell you how eager I am to get away from this place—out into the fresh air, a little adventure of our own, the first one I’ve ever had: just you and me, Melithyrrh—”
“May I ask, lady, what attraction there is in Gloyn?”
“Prestimion,” Thismet said.
In the end she took much less with her than she would have imagined possible to travel with, almost none of her elegant robes and gowns, only simple rough clothes that would be useful in the place where she was going, and just a handful of baubles, a few rings and necklaces to remind her that she was the owner of such things. But also she took a small jewel-handled dagger that she could strap along the inside of her left arm, and, after some thought, an energy-thrower she had borrowed in a moment of foresight from the weapons storehouse, a month before. She had no clear idea of how to use it, and had heard that the things were terribly unreliable in any case, but she supposed it would serve to frighten away anyone who might think that two young women traveling by themselves were easy prey.
Operating the floater was the most challenging part. She had never driven one herself or even paid much attention to what the driver was doing as she was taken about. Nor, as it developed, had Melithyrrh had any experience in driving. But there couldn’t be much to it, could there? Start, stop, up, down, slower, faster—that was about it, she thought. At an hour when Korsibar and the others were having another of their interminable Council meetings—they were always having long meetings nowadays, what with Prestimion’s new rebellion gathering strength in the west and this absurd ongoing crisis of the Metamorph rumors—Thismet requisitioned a pleasure-floater from the captain of the guards, and she and Melithyrrh went dow
The guardsman who brought the floater around looked at them a little strangely when he realized they had no driver of their own with them. But it was not his place to ask questions of the Coronal’s sister. He helped them load their baggage in the storage compartment, and held the door open for them.
“You drive it first,” Thismet whispered.
“Me? But—my lady—”
“They’ll think something’s really wrong if I sit down in front of the controls. Go on!”
“Yes, my lady.”
Melithyrrh studied the panel of controls for a moment. Eight or nine knobs, none of them identified. She took a long deep breath and touched one. Nothing happened. The guardsman was staring open-mouthed at them. Surely he had never seen two ladies of rank get into a floater before on their own.
Melithyrhh pressed another knob. A humming sound came from below them.
“Those are the rotors starting up,” said Thismet. “Now touch the knob to the left of it.”
It was only a guess, but a good one. The nose of the floater came up six inches from the ground, eight inches, ten. And kept on rising.
“Let go of it!”Thismet cried. The floater descended a bit and leveled off. “Now the next knob to the left!” That one sent the floater jolting violently backward. Thismet snatched Melithyrrh’s hand from the knob and put her own on the one just to the right of the rotor control Just as violently; the floater began moving forward. The guardsman, who had backed away from the vehicle at its first lurch, stood off to one side, mouth gaping even wider. “Here we go!” Thismet exclaimed as the floater went cruising uncertainly off toward the Grand Calintane Highway.
“I think I have the essence of the thing now,” Melithyrrh said. “This one makes it go faster, this one slows it down. And this one turns it to the—right? No, the left, I guess. So this one must be—”
“You’re doing very well,” Thismet said. And indeed she was. The floater was remaining level in relation to the ground now, and moving smoothly down the center of the highway track. A sign loomed up. High Morpin to the left, Halanx to the right. “Take the Halanx road,” Thismet ordered. Melithyrrh touched a knob. The floater veered to the right, not too jerkily. “You see?” said Thismet. “Nothing to it at all. We’re on our way.”