Robert Silverberg - Sorcerers of Majipoor

By the light of those stars, and especially that of the new star, the long, narrow white band that was Mavestoi Dam could be seen at the head of the valley above them, running between the dark cliffs. It was there, Prestimion knew, that he and his men must climb this night, up into those forested bluffs, then inward and down upon the unsuspecting royalists in their camp. Looking upward now, Prestimion thought he could make out tiny figures moving along the dam’s concrete rim. Sentries, no doubt. Did they have any idea that twin armies were stealing toward them along both sides of the river below? Very likely not. There was no sense of urgency or alarm in their movements: just some men, tiny as matchsticks from here, steadily pacing up and down along the crest of the dam.

Prestimion checked the positions of the stars. Trinatha, Thorius, Xavial, all in alignment. Time to get going now. He raised his hand, held it high a moment, lowered it. Began to move forward, up the pathway beside the river. On the western shore Duke Miaule’s forces were in motion also.

Upward. Upward.

The Divine grant us its favor, Prestimion thought, and we will finish this struggle tonight and bring sanity back into the world.

“What’s that?” Svor said. “Thunder?”

Prestimion looked around, puzzled. A dull booming sound, indeed. But the night was clear, cloudless. There had been no lighthing; there was no storm.

“Brother? Brother!”

Taradath, coming up the path. “Not so loud!” Prestimion said in a harsh whisper. “What is it?”

“Gaviad—the Zimroel men—”

“Yes?”

Another boom, louder than the first.

“I’ve just had word—they’re heading out. Marching away from the river as fast as they can.”

“Heading—out?” said Prestimion. “But—what—”

Svor said, “Look up there. The dam!”

Boom. Boom. Boom.

No figures could be seen along the dam’s crest now. Only a quick burst of red, like a flare going off, and then a dark jagged crack, and what looked like a triangular chip taken out of the face of that white concrete wall.

Boom! Louder than all the others.

Svor cried, in a ragged voice, “They’re blowing up the dam, Prestimion! They’ll send the whole lake down on us!”

“But that would flood a hundred villages and—” Prestimion replied, and said no more after that, but only gaped in disbelief, for by the lurid light of the explosions above them he could see the whole face of the dam crumbling, and a stupefying torrent of water descending through the darkness toward the valley below and all his men.

This was surely the bleakest place in all the world, Prestimion thought, save only those terrible deserts of the continent of Suvrael where no one in his right mind would ever want to go.

It was a gray land that he was walking through in this black hour. The sky overhead was gray, the dry ground beneath his feet was gray, the very wind was gray with a burden of fine silt as it swept roaring out of the east. The only color in this place came from the plants, which seemed to be striking back against the universal grayness with some furious determination of their own. Big rigid dome-shaped fungi, a deathly yellow in hue, exploded into clouds of brilliant green spores whenever he trampled on one; the tough sparse saw-edged grass was an angry carmine; the trees, tall and narrow as spears, had gleaming blue leaves shaped like spines and constantly dropped a rain of viscous pink sap that burned him like acid whenever he passed incautiously within reach of it.

Low chalky hills that had the look of stubby teeth formed chains across the far horizon. The open country between them was flat and dry and unpromising, no lakes, no streams, only an occasional brackish spring oozing out of some salt-encrusted crack in the ground.

He had been walking for days, so many that he lost count of them. His tongue was thick and swollen from thirst and his eyelids were so puffed that he looked out between them as if through slitted windows. Sweat streamed on him constantly; caked dust clung everywhere to his sticky skin; the force of the sun became a metallic clangor sounding in his head. And through his mind ran, over and over without cease, the remembered images of the cataclysm that had destroyed his army and, for all he knew, robbed him of his dearest friends.

That merciless white wall of water riding down the hillside toward them, with the great sundered chunks of Mavestoi Dam coming down with it—

The terrified mounts bucking and rearing—scattering in every direction—the infantrymen desperately running, seeking high ground—screams in the night—the sound of that falling water, the inexorable sound of it, like the Great Moon itself rushing down upon them through the air to crush them all—

Prestimion had scarcely any recollection of how he himself had managed to survive the destruction of the dam. He remembered the first tongue of foaming water swirling along the ground toward him clearly enough, and remembered too the greater rush of water behind it. His mount struggling to stay upright and failing, pitching over, kicking frantically in the sudden lake that had begun to engulf it. Then his memories were unclear for a time. He knew he had been unable to right the animal or to steady it in any way, and that eventually he was swept out of the saddle and away from the sinking mount by the force of the water. And then—swimming? Yes, he must have made his way somehow across the breast of the rising flood, through all the turbulence of it, great masses of water constantly falling on him like boulders and smashing him under. Being hurled down deep, his lungs filling, and fighting his way up again, again, again. But he had no memory of that at all. Remembered, only, emerging at last onto dry land, crawling up on some rocky outcropping that must have been, an hour earlier, part of the cliff below the dam, and lying there for an endless time, gasping and puking, fighting for breath, sick and dizzy from all the water he had gulped down.

Then—Korsibar’s men coming down into the flood zone, seeking out the dazed survivors, slaughtering them like pigs.

He had no idea how he had escaped that. His weapons had all been lost in the water. Perhaps he had found safety under some overhanging ledge, or behind some bush. All he remembered was that he had come through it alive, somehow. Making his way from the battle scene, from that place along the water’s edge where shouting warriors ran about, where the figures of dead or gravely wounded men lay strewn across the land like straws.

That was not the first time Prestimion had beheld that grim landscape of death. He had seen it once before, he knew: long ago in Muldemar House, in the pleasant peace and privacy of his mother’s reading-gallery, that time when the magus Galbifond had had him look into a bowl of some pallid fluid. Galbifond had muttered incantations and shown him that very battlefield, that same scene of frightful chaos. Prestimion had not known, then, whose armies contended there: but now it was clear that one was Korsibar’s and the other his, and that Korsibar by working a monstrously evil deed had been the victor.

But he himself had survived the flood and the debacle that followed it. In the eye of his mind he saw himself limping away from the battlefield where nothing now remained but the evidence of disaster. Coming forth at last into a quieter place where no one was in sight anywhere, neither friend nor foe. Climbing some steep rocky path that took him upward along the course of the river, past the shattered dam, past the palisades of Korsibar’s encampment.

Alone, as the dreadful dawn after that dreadful night had arrived, Prestimion had looked down and behind hhn, thinking, Taradath? Abrigant? And thinking then, also: Svor? Gialaurys? Septach Melayn?