Robert Silverberg: Tales of Majipoor (collection)

Then, unexpectedly, astonishingly, a side door that Stiamot had not noticed before opened and Mundiveen came limping in. After what had passed between the Coronal and him this morning, he was the last person, perhaps, whom Stiamot expected to see in the banqueting hall tonight. Flushed, panting, he made his way laboriously to Stiamot’s side at the window.

“Metamorphs,” he said hoarsely. “Disguised as townsfolk. Knives under their cloaks. They’re throwing firebrands.” Stiamot looked out again. In the chaos beyond the window he was able to make out the guards attempting to form a phalanx. They were surrounded on three sides by a host of cloaked figures in rapid motion, flickering, changing dizzyingly from one shape to another as they moved.

He seized Mundiveen by the shoulder. “What is this?”

“The beginning of the insurrection, I think. They want to burn the building down.”

“The Coronal—!”

“Yes, the Coronal.”

“I’m going out there,” said Stiamot. “I have to do something.”

“No one can do anything. Especially not you.”

Hesitating only a moment, Stiamot said, “Well, then, what about you? Even in the darkness, they’ll recognize you. And you could talk to them. They trust you if they trust anybody. You’ve done so many things for them. Explain to them now that this is insane, that they have to withdraw or they’ll all die, that the Coronal is too well guarded.”

Mundiveen glared at him scornfully. “Why would they care about that? They’re beyond all caring about anything. Don’t you see, Stiamot, there’s no hope? This is a war to the death, beginning right now, right here, and it will never end, at least not until you people recognize that you have no choice but to eradicate them altogether.”

His words hit Stiamot with the force of a punch. You people ? Did Mundiveen, then, think that he stood outside the human race? You have to eradicate them altogether ? This, from a man who had spent so many years living among them? Stiamot faltered, speechless.

But then, abruptly, between one instant and the next, Mundiveen’s expression changed. A flash of something new came into his eyes, a wild, almost gleeful look, something Stiamot had never seen in them before. “All right,” he said, with a savage, twisted grin. “As you wish, my friend. I’ll go to them. I’ll talk to them.”

“But—wait—wait a moment, Mundiveen—”

Mundiveen broke free of Stiamot’s grasp and ran from the hall.

By now the Coronal seemed to have realized that there was trouble of some sort; he had half-risen from his seat and was looking questioningly toward Stiamot. Stiamot beckoned urgently to him to sit down. His figure would be too conspicuous this way if the Metamorphs succeeded in breaking into the hall.

Then he returned his attention to the window. Mundiveen had somehow succeeded in getting through the line of guards. Stiamot could see his small, angular form, moving clumsily and with great difficulty but even so at remarkable speed into the midst of the attackers. He was visible for a moment, his hands lifted high as though he were calling for their attention. Then the Shapeshifters swarmed in around him, surrounding him, yelling so loudly that their fierce incomprehensible cries penetrated the walls of the building. Stiamot had a fragmentary glimpse or two of Mundiveen tottering about at the center of their group, and then, as Stiamot watched in horror, they closed their circle tightly about him and Mundiveen seemed to melt, to vanish, to disappear entirely from view.

In the morning, after order had been restored and the bodies cleared away, and while the preparations for the Coronal’s departure from Domgrave were being made, Lord Strelkimar called Stiamot to his side.

The Coronal was so pale that the blackness of his beard seemed to have doubled and redoubled in the night. His hands were shaking. He had not dressed; he wore only a casual robe loosely girt, and a flask of wine stood before him on the table.

Stiamot said at once, “My lord, the Shapeshifters—”

Strelkimar waved him to silence with an impatient gesture. “Forget the Shapeshifters for a moment, Stiamot, and listen to me. There’s news from the Labyrinth.” Lord Strelkimar’s voice was a ragged thread, the merest fragment of sound. Stiamot had to strain to hear him. “A message came to me in the afternoon, just as I was getting dressed for the banquet. The Pontifex Gherivale has died. It was a peaceful end, I am told. This has been a day of great surprises, and they are not yet over, my lord.”

My lord? My lord ? Had he lost his mind?

Blinking in confusion, Stiamot said, “What are you saying, my lord?”

“Don’t call me ‘my lord.’ That’s you, Stiamot. I am Pontifex, now.”

“And I am—?” The startling implications began to sink in, and his mind swirled in a jumble of wonder and disbelief. This was unthinkable. “Do I understand you correctly, my lord? How can this be? You are asking me—me—”

“We are in need of a new Coronal. There’s a vacancy in the position. The succession must be maintained.”

“Yes, of course. But—Coronal—me? Surely you aren’t serious. Consider how young I am!” He felt as though he were moving in a dream. “There are counsellors much senior to me. What about Faninal? What about Kreistand?”

“They’ll be disappointed, I suppose. But we need a Coronal, right away, and we need a young one. You’ll be fighting the war against the Shapeshifters for the rest of your life.”

“The war?” said Stiamot leadenly.

“Yes, of course, the war. Your war. The war that we pretended for so long wasn’t coming, and which has now arrived. And happy I am to be able to hand it to you and hide myself away in the Labyrinth. I have enough sins on my soul for one lifetime.” Strelkimar rose. He loomed over Stiamot, a big man, heavy-muscled, deep-chested, still young himself. His face was bloodless with fatigue. Stiamot saw what might have been tears glistening at the corners of Strelkimar’s eyes. “Come, man. Let’s go out to the others and give them the news.”

Stiamot nodded like one who moves in a trance. As it all sank in, the meaning of the bloody events of the night before, the change of government at the Labyrinth, his own precipitous rise to the Coronal’s throne, he knew that Strelkimar was right about the coming of the war. He had known that it was coming from the moment of Mundiveen’s death, or even a little earlier. There is no hope, the little man had said, before running from the banquet hall to yield himself up to his doom. This was something new, an attack on the Coronal himself, and it would not stop there. This is a war to the death. The uneasy peace that had obtained so long between human and Metamorph was at its end. And this was the end of the line, too, for Stiamot’s own dreams of a moderate middle course, of some peaceful resolution of the Metamorph problem. The races must be separated, he thought, or else one of them must be exterminated; and now that high power had been thrust upon him, he would choose the lesser of the two evils.

“Come,” Strelkimar said again. “I have to introduce the new Coronal to them. Come with me, Lord Stiamot.”

The war began in earnest in the spring. It ended in victory in the thirtieth year of Lord Stiamot’s reign.

Standing at the narrow window of his bedchamber early on the morning of the second day of his new life as a captive, looking out at the blood-red waters of the Sea of Barbirike far below, Aithin Furvain heard the bolt that sealed his apartment from the outside being thrown back. He glanced quickly around and saw the lithe catlike form of his captor, the bandit chief Kasinibon, come sidling in. Furvain turned toward the window again.