Sorcerers of Majipoor m-4

by Robert Silverberg

  The material out of which these chambers had been constructed was as mysterious as their purpose. Their walls and roofs were lined with paving-blocks of some radiant synthetic stone that gave off, of its own accord, vivid emanations of color. One chamber was constantly lit by a pulsating maroon glow, another by a brilliant emerald, another saffron, another a powerful rufous hue, another sulfur-toned, another a bright bursting orange, and so on and on.

  The secret of the inherent luminosity of these blocks, which had not dimmed in the slightest in all the millennia since Lord Sangamor’s distant time, was one of the many that had been lost by the craftsmen of Majipoor over the centuries. The effect of the lights and colors of Lord Sangamor’s tunnels was an extremely beautiful one, but also, since they never dimmed even for a moment, by day or by night, it very quickly became exhausting and even distressing to experience it: there was always that great inescapable throbbing sweep of color coming from those walls, hour after hour, day after day, so powerful that it was visible even when one closed one’s eyes to it. That perpetual radiance was, in fact, a torment if one had to endure it for any great length of time.

  And so—since the tunnels were set apart from all the rest of the Castle by the peculiar topography of this region of the Mount, and no other use had ever been found for them, and comfort was not an important factor to consider where prisoners were concerned—they came after some centuries to be employed from time to time as dungeons for the storage of individuals whom the Coronal regarded as excessively obstreperous, or too inconvenient in some other way to be left at large.

  Prestimion had seen the Sangamor tunnels once, long ago, while touring odd corners of the Castle in his boyhood under the auspices of his late father. No one was imprisoned in them then; no one had been, apparently, for some two or three hundred years, not since the time of the Coronal Lord Amyntilir. But the endless waves of color were impressively beautiful if somewhat overwhelming, and the rows of empty shackles mounted against the walls were impressive also in a different way, and so too were the tales that Prestimion’s father told him of this rebellious prince and that hot-headed young duke who had been chained up here in the time of some ancient Coronal desirous of restoring decorum at his court.

  It had never occurred to Prestimion that he might find himself chained up here himself one day. This place was a medieval relic, not something that was in everyday use. But here he was, dangling from a wall that radiated a spectacularly vibrant ruby tone, with his arms spread wide and manacles clamped tight about his wrists and ankles. It struck him almost as funny, now and again. Korsibar, blustering with rage, ordering him off to the dungeons! What was next? The headsman’s block?

  But of course there was nothing funny about it. He was at Korsibar’s mercy. Nobody knew what went on down here. At any moment some henchman of the Coronal’s might come in and slit his throat, and there would be nothing he could do to defend himself. He had been here, he supposed, six or eight hours by now, in unbroken solitude. Perhaps they simply meant to leave him here until he starved to death. Or, perhaps, until those unyielding pulsating waves of red, red, red, endlessly bounding and rebounding from every surface about him, drove him into screaming insanity.

  So it would seem. The hours passed, and no one came.

  Then, astonishingly, a small quiet furry voice said out of the maddening sea of color opposite him, “Do you happen to have your corymbor with you, Prince Prestimion?”

  “What?” His voice was husky from disuse. “Who said that? Where are you?”

  “Just across the way. Thalnap Zelifor. Do you remember me, excellence?”

  “The Vroonish wizard, yes. I remember you all too well.” Prestimion, peering into that obstinate light, blinked, and blinked again, and struggled to focus his eyes. But all he could see was that surging ocean of redness. “If you’re there, you’ve made yourself invisible somehow.”

  “Oh, no. You could see me if you tried. Close your eyes for a time, and open them very quickly, excellence, and you’ll make me out. I’m a prisoner here too, you see.—It amazed me no end when they brought you in here,” the voice out of the red glow continued. “I knew the pattern of your stars was an unfavorable one, but I didn’t think it was that unfavorable. Do you see me yet?”

  “No,” Prestimion said. He shut his eyes, counted to ten and opened them, and saw nothing but the waves of redness. He closed his eyes again, and counted this time to twenty, and decided to count twenty more. When he opened them then, he was able just barely to make out the indistinct shape of the little many-tentacled creature straight across the room from him, manacled to the wall even as he was, with the gyves fastened about two of his biggest tentacles. Thalnap Zelifor was hanging, though, three or four feet off the floor, because he was so small and the manacles had been installed for the purpose of restraining individuals of normal human size.

  The redness closed in again.

  “I saw you for a moment, at least,” Prestimion said. He stared somberly into the pulsating radiance. “It was definitely you,” he said. “You who came to me to tell me in the Labyrinth that I had no clear path to the throne, that you saw omens of opposition on all sides, that I had a mighty enemy who was waiting in secrecy to overthrow me. You knew—by what means, I dare not guess—what was going to happen. It’s fitting, I suppose, that we’d meet next in the same dungeon. You could predict my downfall, but not your own, eh?” He narrowed his eyes, trying without success to make out the Vroon across the way. “How long have you been in here?”

  “Three days, I think. Perhaps four.”

  “Have they fed you?”

  “Occasionally,” said the Vroon. “Not terribly often. I asked you before, prince: do you happen to have your corymbor with you? The little green amulet I gave you, is what I mean.”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I do. On a chain about my throat.”

  “When they come to give you your food, they’ll have to free your hands so you can eat. Rub the corymbor then, and implore the force it controls to smile upon you. That should dispose the guards more favorably to you, and perhaps they’ll feed you more often, or even bring you something better than the usual swill. I should tell you that the food here is abominable, and the guards are utter ruffians.”

  “Your corymbor wasn’t much help to me a little while ago when I was in the throne-room with Korsibar. I touched it once, as he and I were just beginning our dispute. But things only got worse and worse.”

  “You touched it with the intention of using its power, did you? You commended yourself to its strength, and told it your specific need?”

  “I did none of that. It never occurred to me. I merely touched it, as one might scratch at an itch while one is talking.”

  “Well, then,” said Thalnap Zelifor, as though to say that Prestimion’s error was manifestly obvious.

  They were silent for a time.

  “Why have they locked you up in here?” asked Prestimion eventually.

  “That isn’t clear to me. It’s through some grievous act of injustice, of that I’m sure. But who’s responsible has not been shown me. I only know that I’m innocent of the charge, whatever it may be.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Prestimion.

  “I was, for a while,” said the Vroon, “employed as an adviser to the Lady Thismet, and perhaps some of the things I suggested she say to her brother may have been offensive or troubling to him, and he had me put away to keep me from giving her further advice. That could well be. On the other hand, there was the matter of a debt I had incurred, money owing to Prince Gonivaul, who had been financing some of my research. You know how Gonivaul is about money. He may have asked the Coronal to put me here in punishment for my failure to repay him his loan, though how doing that will get him his money back is far from clear to me.”

  “It would seem,” said Prestimion, “that there’s a great deal unclear to you. For one of your profession, that’s not much of a recommendation. I thought all knowledge was an open book to you
sorcerers. And yet you’re not even sure why you’ve been chained to this wall.”

  “It is an imperfect science, excellence,” said Thalnap Zelifor dolorously.

  “Oh, a science, is it?”

  “Oh, yes, most assuredly a science. To you it may seem to be all demon-worship and conjuring, but to us it is a matter of understanding and obeying the basic laws of the universe, which are rooted in utterly rational foundations.”

  “Indeed. Rational foundations, you say. You must teach me about this, if we are in here very long.—You would prefer to call yourself an engineer, I take it, rather than a wizard?”

  ’To me they are nearly the same thing, O Prince. Three hundred years ago an engineer is what I would have been, and no doubt of that. The very research I was doing for the Grand Admiral Gonivaul was purely technical in nature: the invention and construction of a mechanical device.”

  “A mechanical device that would perform acts of sorcery?”

  “A device that would allow one mind to make direct contact with another. Through scientific means, not through any kind of incantation or invocation of demons, I would be able to look into your mind, prince, and see what thoughts were there, and to place thoughts of my own devising in you.”

  Prestimion felt a little shiver of fear. Perhaps it was for the best, he told himself, that Thalnap Zelifor was chained up here hanging on this wall.

  “You’ve actually perfected such a thing?”

  “The research, I fear, is not quite complete, excellence. It wanted still a little more work—but the shortage of funds, you see—Prince Gonivaul’s unwillingness to advance me the few additional royals I needed—”

  “Yes. A great blow that must have been to you. And would you care to tell me what use the Grand Admiral Gonivaul was going to make of this device, once you had finished inventing it?”

  “For that, I think, you would have to ask Prince Gonivaul.”

  “Or use your mind-reading machine, more likely,” Prestimion said. “Gonivaul’s not one to bare his secrets freely to anyone.” For a time he was silent. And then: “Do you happen to have among your repertoire of spells one that will make this damnable red light a little less offensive to the eye?”

  “The corymbor, I believe, could have that effect.”

  “But of course my hands aren’t free to touch the corymbor, are they?”

  “What a pity,” said Thalnap Zelifor. “But here—the guards are coming.” Indeed, Prestimion heard footsteps and the opening of gates. “You’ll be fed now, and your hands will be freed, at least for a little while. That will be your chance.”

  Three guards, bristling with weapons, entered the chamber. One stood by the entrance with folded arms, watching grimly; one unlocked the manacles about Prestimion’s wrists and held out a bowl of cold nasty gruel to him to take and drink down; the third brought a plate of food to the Vroon, who scrabbled eagerly in it with one of his free tentacles. While Prestimion ate, and it was no easy thing to get that thin bitter stuff down, he surreptitiously slipped one hand within the bosom of his tunic and—feeling not only foolish but contemptible, a betrayer of all he believed—gave the corymbor a couple of perfunctory strokes with his finger, and then a couple of strokes more.

  “Is this stuff the best you can find for me?” he asked his guard. “Do you think you could get me anything that doesn’t curdle in the stomach?”

  The guard’s only reply was a cold, bleak stare.

  When the bowl of gruel was empty, the guard took it from Prestimion and returned his hands to their manacles, and all three left the chamber. They had not spoken a word all the while.

  “The lights are just as strong,” Prestimion said. “And the guards seemed not at all friendly.”

  “You touched the corymbor, prince?”

  “Several times, yes.”

  “And asked the power that is resident in it to look favorably upon your needs, did you?”

  “I simply stroked it,” Prestimion admitted. “To do more than that was something I could not bring myself to do. I confess that the invoking of imaginary powers is something that doesn’t come easily to me.”

  “Well, then,” said Thalnap Zelifor again.

  * * *

  Svor, returning late that afternoon from his pleasant assignation with the voluptuous Heisse Vaneille of Bailemoona, found all his satisfaction turning immediately to dust when he learned, as he quickly did, that Prestimion was a prisoner in the Sangamor vaults and that Gialaurys and Septach Melayn were nowhere to be found anywhere in the Castle.

  Prince Serithorn’s useful gray-eyed nephew Akbalik, who was his source for all this, suggested that Duke Svor might do well to flee the Castle himself without much further delay.

  “Is there a proscription declared against the faction of Prestimion?” Svor asked him.

  Akbalik, who was calm and judicious of nature, said only, “Not that I’ve heard. There was some dispute between the Coronal and Prince Prestimion in the throne-room, and Lord Korsibar ordered the prince to be imprisoned: that I can tell you absolutely. What became of the other two, I can only guess. Some guardsmen, I understand, were badly damaged in a sword-scuffle near one of the back gates. It’s not unreasonable to think they got in Septach Melayn’s way as they were leaving.”

  “No doubt. So they are gone, and I am left here alone.”

  “It might not be wise for you to stay either,” he said again.

  Svor nodded. He sat quietly for a time, considering the range of possibilities that stretched before him, none of them cheerful and most of them perilous. That the interview between Korsibar and Prestimion had ended in calamity did not surprise him. It was disheartening to Svor to see how Prestimion insisted again and again on thrusting his head into demons’ lairs, despite the warnings he repeatedly offered the prince. But Prestimion was not a man to put much credence, or any, in omens and forecasts; and thrusting himself knowingly into the lairs of demons seemed to be an integral aspect of his personality. Svor was of a different cast of mind entirely: comprehending Prestimion was not always an easy thing for him.

  Now it was his own future that had to be spied out and understood, Svor knew, or he was lost. The auguries were ambiguous.

  At length he reached his decision. “I’ll seek immediate audience with Korsibar myself,” he told Akbalik.

  “Do you think that’s wise?”

  “Wiser than any other course. I’m not one for slashing my way out of the Castle like Septach Melayn, or throwing guardsmen around like twelvepins in the fashion of Gialaurys. If Korsibar wants to imprison me, so be it. But I think I can talk my way around that: and I see no other path for myself.”

  And so Svor requested—and, somewhat to his surprise, was immediately granted—entry to the Coronal’s office. Two armed Skandar guardsmen stood protectively beside the Coronal’s palisander desk, as though Gialaurys’s brave talk of leaping upon Korsibar with a dagger had drifted through the corridors to Korsibar’s ears. Svor felt dwarfed before those giant aliens and the commanding figure of Korsibar between them. But that was no new thing for him, to be among bigger and stronger men. Slender and wiry and frail though he was, he had held his ground among them well enough thus far.

  Korsibar himself looked drained and enervated, sallow-faced, with a stark, haunted look in his eyes. He had a string of amber beads in his left hand and was toying with them in a nervous, compulsive way, passing them one by one between his long powerful fingers. The crown lay in a corner of the desk like a discarded toy.

  He said in a strange subdued way as Svor took up a position before the desk, “Have you come here to defy me too, old friend?”

  “Is that what happened? Prestimion defied you?”

  “I offered him a Council seat. He spurned me and told me to my face that I was an unlawful illegitimate Coronal. How could I tolerate that?—Give me a starburst, Svor, I pray you. I am king here, remember.”

  This costs me nothing, Svor reflected. He brought his hands upward in the gesture
of respect.

  Korsibar’s face, which had been stern and tense and drawn, softened with relief. “Thank you. I wouldn’t want to have to imprison you also.”

  “The rumor’s true, then? Prestimion is chained in the vaults?”

  “For a little while. I’ll bring him up in a day or two and speak with him again. I want him to see reason, Svor. The world hails me as king. My father himself recognizes my accession. There’s nothing he can gain but grief by interposing himself between me and the throne now. Do you agree?”

  “There will be grief, yes. I have no doubt of that.—Where are Gialaurys and Septach Melayn? In the vaults with Prestimion?”

  “They are fled, I think,” replied Korsibar. “Certainly Septach Melayn is gone—he fought with four guardsmen as he left, and chopped them into sausage-meat—and no one’s seen Gialaurys since midday. I had no quarrel with either of them. I would only have asked a starburst or two from them, and that they call me ‘my lord’ when they spoke to me. You should say it too, Svor: ‘my lord.’ ”

  “If it pleases you, my lord.”

  “Not because it pleases me, but because it is my proper title of respect. One says those words when one addresses the Coronal.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Korsibar managed a pale smile. “Oh, Svor, Svor, you are the least trustworthy man who ever walked this planet, and I love you even so! Do you know how much I miss you? We were such warm friends; we drank of the same cup, we embraced the same women, we stayed up all through the night many a time telling wild stories, and ran to the river to swim at dawn. And then you went to Prestimion. Why did you leave me for him, Svor?”

  “I never left you, my lord. You stand great in my heart, as much as ever. But I find much pleasure in Prestimion’s company. And that of Gialaurys, and Septach Melayn, for whom I feel a great fondness and a deep interest in the ways of their minds, though I have little in common with either of them. Nor does either of them have much commonality with the other of them, for that matter. They are of two very different kinds.”