Majipoor Chronicles

by Robert Silverberg

  XI

  THOSE FINAL MOMENTS, that epilogue that some scribe had appended to the young Valentine’s soul-record, leave Hissune dazed. He sits motionless a long while; then he rises as if in a dream and begins to leave the cubicle. Images out of that frenzied night in the forest revolve in his stunned mind: the rival brothers, the bright-eyed witch, the bare grappling bodies, the prophecy of kingship. Yes, two kings! And Hissune has spied on them in the most vulnerable moment of their lives! He feels abashed, a rare emotion for him. Perhaps the time has come for a holiday from the Register of Souls, he thinks: the power of these experiences sometimes is overwhelming, and he may well require some months of recuperation. His hands shake as he steps through the doorway.

  One of the usual functionaries of the Register admitted him an hour earlier, a plump and wall-eyed man named Penagorn, and he is still at his desk; but another person stands beside him, a tall, straight-backed individual in the green-and-gold uniform of the Coronal’s staff, who studies Hissune severely and says, “May I see your identification, please?”

  So this is the moment he has dreaded. They have found him out—unauthorized use of the archives—and he is to be arrested. Hissune offers his card. Probably they have known of his illegal intrusions here for a long time, but have simply been waiting for him to commit the ultimate atrocity, the playing of the Coronal’s own recording. Very likely that one bears an alarm, Hissune thinks, that silently summons the minions of the Coronal, and now—

  “You are the one we seek,” says the man in green and gold. “Please come with me.”

  Silently Hissune follows—out of the House of Records and across the great plaza to the entrance to the lowest levels of the Labyrinth, and past a checkpoint to a waiting floater-car, and then downward, downward, into mysterious realms Hissune has never entered. He sits motionless, numb. All the world presses down on this place; layer upon layer of the Labyrinth spirals over his head. Where are they now? Is this place the Court of Thrones, where the high ministers hold sway? Hissune does not dare ask, and his escort says not a word. Through gate after gate, passage upon passage; then the floater-car halts; six more in the uniforms of Lord Valentine’s staff emerge; they conduct him into a brightly lit room and stand flanking him.

  A door opens, sliding into a recess, and a golden-haired man, wide-shouldered and tall, clad in a simple white robe, enters the room. Hissune gasps.

  “Your lordship—”

  “Please. Please. We can do without all that bowing, Hissune. You are Hissune, aren’t you?”

  “I am, my lord. Somewhat older.”

  “Eight years ago, Was that it? Yes, eight. You were this high. And now a man. Well, I suppose I’m foolish to be surprised, but I suspected a boy even now. You’re eighteen?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “How old were you when you started poking about in the Register of Souls?”

  “You know of that, then, my lord?” Hissune whispers, turning crimson, staring at his feet.

  “Fourteen, were you? I think that’s what they told me. I’ve had you watched, you know. It was three or four years ago that they sent word to me that you had bluffed your way into the Register. Fourteen, pretending to be a scholar. I imagine you saw a great many things that boys of fourteen don’t ordinarily see.”

  Hissune’s cheeks blaze. Through his mind rolls the thought, An hour ago, my lord, I saw you and your brother coupling with a long-haired witch of Ghiseldorn. He would let himself be swallowed in the depths of the world before he says such a thing aloud. But he is certain that Lord Valentine knows it anyway, and that awareness is crushing to Hissune. He cannot look up. This golden-haired man is not the Valentine of the soul-record, for that had been the dark-haired Valentine, later magicked out of his body in the way that everyone now has heard, and these days the Coronal wears other flesh; but the person within is the same, and Hissune has spied on him, and there is no hiding the truth of that.

  Hissune is silent.

  Lord Valentine says, “Possibly I should take that back. You always were precocious. The Register probably didn’t show you many things that you hadn’t seen on your own.”

  “It showed me Ni-moya, my lord,” Hissune says in a croaking, barely audible voice. “It showed me Suvrael, and the cities of Castle Mount, and the jungles outside Narabal—”

  “Places, yes. Geography. It’s useful to know all that. But the geography of the soul—you learned that your own way, eh? Look up at me. I’m not angry with you.”

  “No?”

  “It was by my orders that you had free access to the Register. Not so you could gawk at Ni-moya, and not so you could spy on people making love, particularly. But so you could get a comprehension of what Majipoor really is, so you could experience a millionth millionth part of the totality of this world of ours. It was your education, Hissune. Am I right?”

  “That was how I saw it, my lord. Yes. There was so much I wanted to know.”

  “Did you learn it all?”

  “Not nearly. Not a millionth millionth part.”

  “Too bad. Because you’ll no longer have access to the Register.”

  “My lord? Am I to be punished?”

  Lord Valentine smiles oddly. “Punished? No, that’s not the right word. But you’ll be leaving the Labyrinth, and chances are you’ll not be back here for a very long time, not even when I’m Pontifex, and may that day not come soon. I’ve named you to my staff, Hissune. Your training period’s over. I want to put you to work. You’re old enough now, I think. You have family here still?”

  “My mother, two sisters—”

  “Provided for. Whatever they need. Say goodbye to them and pack your things. Can you leave with me in three days?”

  “Three—days—”

  “For Alaisor. The grand processional is demanded of me again. And then the Isle. We skip Zimroel this time. Back to the Mount in seven or eight months, I hope. You’ll have a suite at the Castle. Some formal instruction—that won’t be unpleasant for you, will it? Fancier clothes to wear. You saw all this coming, didn’t you? You know I marked you for great things, when you were only a ragged little boy fleecing tourists?” The Coronal laughs. “It’s late. I’ll send for you again in the morning. There’s much for us to discuss.”

  He extends his fingertips toward Hissune, a courtly little gesture, Hissune bows, and when he dares to look up, Lord Valentine is gone. So. So. It has come to pass after all, his dream, his fantasy. Hissune does not allow any expression to enter his face. Rigid, somber, he turns to the green-and-gold escort, and follows them to the corridors, and they convey him up into the public levels of the Labyrinth. There they leave him. But he cannot go to his room now. His mind is racing, feverish, wild with amazement. From its depths come surging all those long-vanished folk he has come to know so well, Nismile and Sinnabor Lavon, Thesme, Dekkeret, Calintane, poor anguished Haligome, Eremoil, Inyanna Forlana, Vismaan, Sarise. Part of him now, embedded forever in his soul. He feels as though he has devoured the entire planet. What will become of him now? Aide to the Coronal? A glittering new life on Castle Mount? Holidays in High Morpin and Stee, and the great ones of the realm as his companions? Why, he might be Coronal himself some day! Lord Hissune! He laughs at his own monstrous presumption. And yet, and yet, and yet, why not? Had Calintane expected to be Coronal? Had Dekkeret? Had Valentine? But one must not think of such things, Hissune tells himself. One must work, and learn, and live one’s life a moment at a time, and one’s destiny will shape itself.

  He realizes that he has somehow become lost—he, who at the age of ten was the most skillful guide the Labyrinth had. He has wandered in his daze from level to level, and half the night is gone, and he has no idea now where he is. And then he sees that he is in the uppermost level of the Labyrinth, on the desert side, near the Mouth of Blades. In fifteen minutes he can be outside the Labyrinth entirely. To go out there is not something he normally yearns to do; but this night is special, and he does not resist as his feet take him
toward the gateway of the underground city. He comes to the Mouth of Blades and stares a long while at the rusted swords of some antique era that were set across its front to mark the boundary; then he steps past them and out into the hot dry wasteland beyond. Like Dekkeret roaming that other and far more terrible desert he strides into the emptiness, until he is a good distance from the teeming hive that is the Labyrinth, and stands alone under the cool brilliant stars. So many of them! And one is Old Earth, from which all the billions and billions of humankind had sprung so long ago. Hissune stands as if entranced. Through him pours an overwhelming sense of all the long history of the cosmos, rushing upon him like an irresistible river. The Register of Souls contains the records of enough lives to keep him busy for half of eternity, he thinks, and yet what is in it is just the merest fraction of everything that has existed on all those worlds of all those stars. He wants to seize and engulf it all and make it part of him as he had made those other lives part of him, and of course that cannot be done, and even the thought of it dizzies him. But he must give up such notions now, and forswear the temptations of the Register. He holds himself still until his mind has ceased its whirling. I will be quite calm now, he tells himself. I will regain control over my feelings. He allows himself one final look toward the stars, and searches among them, in vain, for the sun of Old Earth. Then he shrugs and swings about and slowly walks back toward the Mouth of Blades. Lord Valentine will send for him again in the morning. It is important to get some sleep before then. A new life is about to begin for him. I will live on Castle Mount, he thinks, and I will be an aide to the Coronal, and who knows what will happen to me after that? But whatever happens will be the right thing, as it was for Dekkeret, for Thesme, for Sinnabor Lavon, even for Haligome, for all of those whose souls are part of my soul now.

  Hissune stands just outside the Mouth of Blades for a moment, only a moment, and the moment stretches, and the stars begin to fade, and the first light of dawn comes, and then a mighty sunrise takes possession of the sky, and all the land is flooded with light. He does not move. The warmth of the sun of Majipoor touches his face, as so rarely has it done in his life until now. The sun . . . the sun . . . the glorious blazing fiery sun . . . the mother of the worlds . . . He reaches out his arms to it. He embraces it. He smiles and drinks in its blessing. Then he turns and goes down into the Labyrinth for the last time.

  About the Author

  Robert Silverberg has won five Nebula Awards, four Hugo Awards, and the prestigious Prix Apollo. He is the author of more than one hundred science fiction and fantasy novels — including the best-selling Lord Valentine trilogy and the classics Dying Inside and A Time of Changes and more than sixty nonfiction works. Among the sixty-plus anthologies he has edited are Legends and Far Horizons, which contain original sort stories set in the most popular universe of Robert Jordan, Stephen King, Ursula K. Le Guin, Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Orson Scott Card, and virtually every other bestselling fantasy an SF writer today. Mr. Silverberg’s Majipoor Cycle, set on perhaps the grandest and greatest world ever imagined, is considered one of the jewels in the crown of speculative fiction.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  By Robert Silverberg

  Lord Valentine’s Castle

  Valentine Pontifex

  Majipoor Chronicles

  Sorcerers of Majipoor

  Credits

  Cover illustration by Jim Burns.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  A trade paperback edition of this book was published in 1982 by Priam Books.

  Portions of this book have appeared in somewhat different form in Omni, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

  MAJIPOOR CHRONICLES. Copyright © 1981, 1982 by Agberg, Ltd./Robert Silverberg. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061747250

  First HarperPrism paperback printing: July 1996

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