Majipoor Chronicles

by Robert Silverberg

  She entered the assembly-room. Teaching at the chapter-house was done mainly by the tutors, who were fully qualified dream-speakers voluntarily taking a few years from their practices to give instruction, but the consummates, the final-year students who were speakers in all but the last degree, were required also to work with the novices by way of gaining experience in dealing with people. Tisana taught the brewing of dream-wine, theory of sendings, and social harmonics. The novices looked up at her with awe and respect as she took her place at the desk. What could they know of her fears and doubts? To them she was a high initiate of their rite, barely a notch or two below the Superior Inuelda. She had mastered all the skills they were struggling so hard to comprehend. And if they were aware of the Testing at all, it was merely as a vague dark cloud on the distant horizon, no more relevant to their immediate concerns than old age and death.

  “Yesterday,” Tisana began, taking a deep breath and trying to make herself seem cool and self-possessed, an oracle, a fount of wisdom, “we spoke of the role of the King of Dreams in regulating the behavior of society on Majipoor. You, Meliara, raised the issue of the frequent malevolence of the imagery in sendings of the King, and questioned the underlying morality of a social system based on chastisement through dreams. I’d like us to address that issue today in more detail. Let us consider a hypothetical person—say, a sea-dragon hunter from Piliplok—who in a moment of extreme inner stress commits an act of unpremeditated but severe violence against a fellow member of her crew, and—”

  The words came rolling from her in skeins. The novices scribbled notes, frowned, shook their heads, scribbled notes even more frantically. Tisana remembered from her own novitiate that desperate feeling of being confronted with an infinity of things to learn, not merely techniques of the speaking itself but all kinds of subsidiary nuances and concepts. She hadn’t anticipated any of that, and probably neither had the novices before her. But of course Tisana had given little thought to the difficulties that becoming a dream-speaker might pose for her. Anticipatory worrying, until this business of the Testing had arisen, had never been her style. One day seven years ago a sending had come upon her from the Lady, telling her to leave her farm and bend herself toward dream-speaking, and without questioning it she had obeyed, borrowing money and going off on the long pilgrimage to the Isle of Sleep for the preparatory instruction, and then, receiving permission there to enroll at the Velalisier chapter-house, journeying onward across the interminable sea to this remote and forlorn desert where she had lived the past four years. Never doubting, never hesitating.

  But there was so much to learn! The myriad details of the speaker’s relationship with her clients, the professional etiquette, the responsibilities, the pitfalls. The method of mixing the wine and merging minds. The ways of couching interpretations in usefully ambiguous words. And the dreams themselves! The types, the significances, the cloaked meanings! The seven self-deceptive dreams and the nine instructive dreams, the dreams of summoning, the dreams of dismissal, the three dreams of transcendence of self, the dreams of postponement of delight, the dreams of diminished awareness, the eleven dreams of torment, the five dreams of bliss, the dreams of interrupted voyage, the dreams of striving, the dreams of good illusions, the dreams of harmful illusions, the dreams of mistaken ambition, the thirteen dreams of grace—Tisana had had learned them all, had made the whole list part of her nervous system the way the multiplication table and the alphabet were, had rigorously experienced each of the many types through month upon month of programmed sleep, and so in truth she was an adept, she was an initiate, she had attained all that these wide-eyed unformed youngsters here were striving to know, and yet all the same tomorrow the Testing might undo her completely, which none of them could possibly comprehend.

  Or could they? The lesson came to its end and Tisana stood at her desk for a moment, numbly shuffling papers, as the novices filed out. One of them, a short plump fair-haired girl from one of the Guardian Cities of Castle Mount, paused before her a moment—dwarfed by her, as most people were—and looked up and touched her fingertips lightly to Tisana’s forearm, a moth-wing caress, and whispered shyly, “It’ll be easy for you tomorrow. I’m certain of it.” And smiled and turned away, cheeks blazing, and was gone.

  So they knew, then—some of them. That benediction remained with Tisana like a candle’s glow through all the rest of the day. A long dreary day it was, too, full of chores that could not be shirked, though she would have preferred to go off by herself and walk in the desert instead of doing them. But there were rituals to perform and observances to make and some heavy digging at the site of the new chapel of the Lady, and in the afternoon another class of novices to face, and then a little solitude before dinner, and finally dinner itself, at sundown. By then it seemed to Tisana that this morning’s little rainstorm had happened weeks ago, or perhaps in a dream.

  Dinner was a tense business. She had almost no appetite, something unheard-of for her. All around her in the dining-hall surged the warmth and vitality of the chapter-house, laughter, gossip, raucous singing, and Tisana sat isolated in the midst of it as if surrounded by an invisible sphere of crystal. The older women were elaborately ignoring the fact that this was the eve of her Testing, while the younger ones, trying to do the same, could not help stealing little quick glances at her, the way one covertly looks at someone who suddenly has been called upon to bear some special burden. Tisana was not sure which was worse, the bland pretense of the consummates and tutors or the edgy curiosity of the pledgeds and novices. She toyed with her food. Freylis scolded her as one would scold a child, telling her she would need strength for tomorrow. At that Tisana managed a thin laugh, patting her firm fleshy middle and saying, “I’ve stored up enough already to last me through a dozen Testings.”

  “All the same,” Freylis replied. “Eat.”

  “I can’t. I’m too nervous.”

  From the dais came the sound of a spoon tinkling against a glass. Tisana looked up. The Superior was rising to make an announcement.

  In dismay Tisana muttered, “The Lady keep me! Is she going to say something in front of everybody about my Testing?”

  “It’s about the new Coronal,” said Freylis. “The news arrived this afternoon.”

  “What new Coronal?”

  “To take the place of Lord Tyeveras, now that he’s Pontifex. Where have you been? For the past five weeks—”

  “—and indeed this morning’s rain was a sign of sweet tidings and a new springtime,” the Superior was saying.

  Tisana forced herself to follow the old woman’s words.

  “A message has come to me today that will cheer you all. We have a Coronal again! The Pontifex Tyeveras has selected Malibor of Bombifale, who this night on Castle Mount will take his place upon the Confalume Throne!”

  There was cheering and table-pounding and making of starburst signs. Tisana, like one who walks in sleep, did as the others were doing. A new Coronal? Yes, yes, she had forgotten, the old Pontifex had died some months back and the wheel of state had turned once more; Lord Tyeveras was Pontifex now and there was a new man this very day atop Castle Mount. “Malibor! Lord Malibor! Long live the Coronal!” she shouted, along with the rest, and yet it was unreal and unimportant to her. A new Coronal? One more name on the long, long list. Good for Lord Malibor, whoever he may be, and may the Divine treat him kindly: his troubles are only now beginning. But Tisana hardly cared. One was supposed to celebrate at the outset of a reign. She remembered getting tipsy on fireshower wine when she was a little girl and the famous Kinniken had died, bringing Lord Ossier into the Labyrinth of the Pontifex and elevating Tyeveras to Castle Mount. And now Lord Tyeveras was Pontifex and somebody else was Coronal, and some day, no doubt, Tisana would hear that this Malibor had moved on to the Labyrinth and there was another eager young Coronal on the throne. Though these events were supposed to be terribly important, Tisana could not at the moment care at all what the king’s name happened to be, whether Malibo
r or Tyeveras or Ossier or Kinniken. Castle Mount was far away, thousands of miles, for all she knew did not even exist. What loomed as high in her life as Castle Mount was the Testing. Her obsession with her Testing overshadowed everything, turning all other events into wraiths. She knew that was absurd. It was something like the bizarre intensifying of feeling ‘that comes over one when one is ill, when the entire universe seems to center on the pain behind one’s left eye or the hollowness in one’s gut, and nothing else has any significance. Lord Malibor? She would celebrate his rising some other time.

  “Come,” Freylis said. “Let’s go to your room.”

  Tisana nodded. The dining-hall was no place for her tonight. Conscious that all eyes were on her, she made her way unsteadily down the aisle and out into the darkness. A dry warm wind was blowing, a rasping wind, grating against her nerves. When they reached Tisana’s cell, Freylis lit the candles and gently pushed Tisana down on the bed. From the cabinet she took two wine-bowls, and from under her robe she drew a small flask.

  “What are you doing?” Tisana asked.

  “Wine. To relax you.”

  “Dream-wine?”

  “Why not?”

  Frowning, Tisana said, “We aren’t supposed to—”

  “We aren’t going to do a speaking. This is just to relax you, to bring us closer together so that I can share my strength with you. Yes? Here.” She poured the thick, dark wine into the bowls and put one into Tisana’s hand. “Drink. Drink it, Tisana.” Numbly Tisana obeyed. Freylis drank her own, quickly, and began to remove her clothes. Tisana looked at her in surprise. She had never had a woman for a lover. Was that what Freylis wanted her to do now? Why? This is a mistake, Tisana thought. On the eve of my Testing, to be drinking dream-wine, to be sharing my bed with Freylis—

  “Get undressed,” Freylis whispered.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep dream-vigil with you, silly. As we agreed. Nothing more. Finish your wine and get your robe off!”

  Freylis was naked now. Her body was almost like a child’s, straight-limbed, lean, with pale clear skin and small girlish breasts. Tisana dropped her own clothes to the floor. The heaviness of her flesh embarrassed her, the powerful arms, the thick columns of her thighs and legs. One was always naked when one did speakings, and one quickly came not to care about baring one’s body, but somehow this was different, intimate, personal. Freylis poured a little more wine for each of them. Tisana drank without protest. Then Freylis seized Tisana’s wrists and knelt before her and stared straight into her eyes and said, in a tone both affectionate and scornful, “You big fool, you’ve got to stop worrying about tomorrow! The Testing is nothing. Nothing.” She blew out the candles and lay down alongside Tisana. “Sleep softly. Dream well.” Freylis curled herself up in Tisana’s bosom and clasped herself close against her, but she lay still, and in moments she was asleep.

  So they were not to become lovers. Tisana felt relief. Another time, perhaps—why not?—but this was no moment for such adventures. Tisana closed her eyes and held Freylis as one might hold a sleeping child. The wine made a throbbing in her, and a warmth. Dream-wine opened one mind to another, and Tisana was keenly sensitive now to Freylis’ spirit beside her, but this was no speaking and they had not done the focusing exercises that created the full union; from Freylis came only broad undefined emanations of peace and love and energy. She was strong, far stronger than her slight body led one to think, and as the dream-wine took deeper hold of Tisana’s mind she drew increasing comfort from the nearness of the other woman. Slowly drowsiness overtook her. Still she fretted—about the Testing, about what the others would think about their going off together so early in the evening, about the technical violation of regulations that they had committed by sharing the wine this way—and eddying currents of guilt and shame and fear swirled through her spirit for a time. But gradually she grew calm. She slept. With a speaker’s trained eye she kept watch on her dreams, but they were without form or sequence, the images mysteriously imprecise, a blank horizon illuminated by a vague and distant glow, and now perhaps the face of the Lady, or of the Superior Inuelda, or of Freylis, but mainly just a band of warm consoling light. And then it was dawn and some bird was shrieking on the desert, announcing the new day.

  Tisana blinked and sat up. She was alone. Freylis had put away the candles and washed the wine-bowls, and had left a note on the table—no, not a note, a drawing, the lightning-bolt symbol of the King of Dreams within the triangle-within-triangle symbol of the Lady of the Isle, and around that a heart, and around that a radiant sun: a message of love and good cheer.

  “Tisana?”

  She went to the door. The old tutor Vandune was there.

  “Is it time?” Tisana asked.

  “Time and then some. The sun’s been up for twenty minutes. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Tisana said. She felt oddly calm—ironic, after this week of fears. But now that the moment was at hand there no longer was anything to fear. Whatever would be, would be: and if she were to be found lacking in her Testing, so be it, it would be for the best.

  She followed Vandune across the courtyard and past the vegetable plot and out of the chapter-house grounds. A few people were already up and about, but did not speak to them. By the sea-green light of early day they marched in silence over the crusted desert sands, Tisana checking her pace to keep just to the rear of the older woman. They walked eastward and southward, without a word passing between them, for what felt like hours and hours, miles and miles. Out of the emptiness of the desert there began to appear now the outlying ruins of the ancient Metamorph city of Velalisier, that vast and haunted place of forbidding scope and majesty, thousands of years old and long since accursed and abandoned by its builders. Tisana thought she understood. For the Testing, they would turn her loose in the ruins and let her wander among the ghosts all day. But could that be it? So childish, so simpleminded? Ghosts held no terrors for her. And they should be doing this by night, besides, if they meant to frighten her. Velalisier by day was just a thing of humps and snags of stone, fallen temples, shattered columns, sand-buried pyramids.

  They came at last to a kind of amphitheater, well preserved, ring upon ring of stone seats radiating outward in a broad arc. In the center stood a stone table and a few stone benches, and on the table sat a flask and a wine-bowl. So this was the place of the Testing! And now, Tisana guessed, she and old Vandune would share the wine and lie down together on the flat sandy ground, and do a speaking, and when they rose Vandune would know whether or not to enroll Tisana of Falkynkip in the roster of dream-speakers.

  But that was not how it would be either. Vandune indicated the flask and said, “It holds dream-wine. I will leave you here. Pour as much of the wine as you like, drink, look into your soul. Administer the Testing to yourself.”

  “I?”

  Vandune smiled. “Who else can test you? Go. Drink. In time I wll return.”

  The old tutor bowed and walked away. Tisana’s mind brimmed with questions, but she held them back, for she sensed that the Testing had already begun and that the first part of it was that no questions could be asked. In puzzlement she watched as Vandune passed through a niche in the amphitheater wall and disappeared into an alcove. There was no sound after that, not even a footfall. In the crushing silence of the empty city the sand seemed to be roaring, but silently. Tisana frowned, smiled, laughed—a booming laugh that stirred far-off echoes. The joke was on her! Devise your own Testing, that was the thing! Let them dread the day, then march them into the ruins and tell them to run the show themselves! So much for dread anticipation of fearsome ordeals, so much for the phantoms of the soul’s own making.

  But how—

  Tisana shrugged. Poured the wine, drank. Very sweet, perhaps wine of another year. The flask was a big one. All right: I’m a big woman. She gave herself a second draught. Her stomach was empty; she felt the wine almost instantly churning her brains. Yet she drank a third.

 
; The sun was climbing fast. The edge of its fore-limb had reached the top of the amphitheater wall.

  “Tisana!” she cried. And to her shout she replied, “Yes, Tisana?”

  Laughed. Drank again.

  She had never before had dream-wine in solitude. It was always taken in the presence of another—either while doing a speaking, or else with a tutor. Drinking it now alone was like asking questions of one’s reflection. She felt the kind of confusion that comes from standing between two mirrors and seeing one’s image shuttled back and forth to infinity.

  “Tisana,” she said, “this is your Testing. Are you fit to be a dream-speaker?”

  And she answered, “I have studied four years, and before that I spent three more making the pilgrimage to the Isle. I know the seven self-deceptive dreams and the nine instructive dreams, the dreams of summoning, the dreams of—”

  “All right. Skip all that. Are you fit to be a dream-speaker?”

  “I know how to mix the wine and how to drink it.”

  “Answer the question. Are you fit to be a dream-speaker?”

  “I am very stable. I am tranquil of soul.”

  “You are evading the question.”

  “I am strong and capable. I have little malice in me. I wish to serve the Divine.”

  “What about serving your fellow beings?”

  “I serve the Divine by serving them.”

  “Very elegantly put. Who gave you that line, Tisana?”

  “It just came to me. May I have some more wine?”

  “All you like.”